Norway Axes NH90 Chopper Fleet As Manufacturer Howls

Norway has terminated its contract with NH Industries (NHI) and will return the 13 NH90 helicopters that have already been delivered, in addition to demanding a full refund of the NKr5 billion ($500 million) spent on their purchase, Dominic Perry reported for the aviation industry publication FlightGlobal.

Photo Insert: Norway is the second country to exit the NH90 program.

Norway is the second country to exit the NH90 program, following Australia, which announced in December 2021 that it would retire its NH90 fleet early in favor of the Sikorsky UH-60M Black Hawk.

On June 10, Norwegian defense minister Bjorn Arild Gram announced the decision, saying that no amount of investment would allow the NH90 to meet the country's requirements.

"It's a serious decision," he says, "but no matter how many hours the personnel work or how many parts we order, the NH90 will not be able to meet the needs of the armed forces." Gro Jaere, the head of Norway's NDMA defense materiel administration, cites four major reasons for the contract termination: severe delays in helicopter delivery; reliability; maintenance issues; and component obsolescence.

An initial delivery schedule called for all 14 maritime NH90s to be delivered by 2008, but that date was later pushed back to 2022. Even the revised timeline has not been met.

According to her, the final helicopter will not arrive until 2024. In fact, only eight NH90s in their final configuration have been delivered. The helicopters' reliability continues to be an issue, according to Jaere. The failure rate per flight hour is 40 times too high even in their final configuration.

NHI, a three-way consortium comprised of Airbus Helicopters, Leonardo Helicopters, and GKN/Fokker, had launched a number of initiatives to address the issues, including the recruitment of local maintenance providers such as Kongsberg.

"NH Industries was not offered the possibility to discuss the latest proposal made to improve the availability of the NH90 in Norway and to address the specific Norwegian requirements," the manufacturer says.

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