The helicopter the President did not need

In February 2009, a month into his presidency, Barack Obama was asked about the new Marine One programme and said the helicopter he already had seemed perfectly adequate to him. It was a bad day in Yeovil. The VH-71 Kestrel, a presidential version of AgustaWestland’s AW101 built with Lockheed Martin and Bell, had been chosen in January 2005 on a $1.7 billion development contract. By 2009 the estimate for 28 helicopters had passed $13 billion. The US Navy cancelled the programme on 1 June 2009, after spending about $4.4 billion. Canada later bought the nine finished airframes for spare parts.

Two old rivals, one company

AgustaWestland was born of a marriage between old competitors. Agusta, founded by Count Giovanni Agusta in 1923 and long a Bell licensee, belonged to Italy’s state-controlled Finmeccanica. Westland, of Yeovil, had built Sikorsky designs and the Lynx for Britain and belonged to the engineering group GKN. The two had already worked together on the EH101 through their joint venture EH Industries. In July 2000 they merged their helicopter businesses 50:50. Four years later Finmeccanica bought out GKN’s half for 1.06 billion pounds, and AgustaWestland became an Italian-owned company with a large British arm.

The AW139 machine

The company’s fortune rested on one design above all. The AB139 began as a joint Agusta-Bell project and first flew on 3 February 2001. In 2005 AgustaWestland paid $95 million for Bell’s 25 per cent share and every right to the aircraft, renaming it the AW139. It proved one of the great helicopter successes: 720 sold to more than 200 operators in 60 countries by 2013, more than 1,200 built by July 2024, with a second production line in Philadelphia from 2007. Oil rigs, coastguards, police and air ambulances all bought it.

A family of helicopters

Around that bestseller the company built a family. The AW149 military helicopter first flew in November 2009; the AW159 Wildcat, successor to the Lynx, flew from Yeovil the same month and replaced it in British service. The AW189 followed in December 2011 and the AW169 in May 2012, sharing cockpit and design philosophy. With Turkish Aerospace it developed the T129 attack helicopter from the A129 Mangusta, on a $1.2 billion deal signed in 2007. In early 2010 it bought Poland’s PZL-Świdnik, adding the W-3 Sokół works to sites in Italy, Britain and the United States.

The India affair

The darkest chapter began with a sale. In February 2010 India ordered 12 AW101s to carry its VIPs. On 12 February 2013 Italian police arrested Giuseppe Orsi, chief executive of Finmeccanica and AgustaWestland’s former boss, over alleged bribes to win the deal. India cancelled the contract in January 2014 after three helicopters had been delivered and recovered much of the money paid. The Italian cases swung for years, from conviction on appeal in 2016 to retrial and acquittal, and Orsi was finally cleared in May 2019. In India the case ran on, with middleman Christian Michel extradited from Dubai in December 2018.

Tiltrotors and electric dreams

Not every bet was on conventional rotors. In 2011 AgustaWestland took full control of the BA609 civil tiltrotor from Bell, renaming it the AW609. On 30 October 2015 the second prototype broke up in a high-speed dive near Vergiate, killing test pilots Pietro Venanzi and Herb Moran. The company also quietly flew Project Zero, an all-electric tiltrotor demonstrator, tethered at Cascina Costa in June 2011 and unveiled in 2013. And in August 2008 a factory-standard AW109S Grand flown by Scott Kasprowicz and Steve Sheik set a round-the-world helicopter speed record of 11 days, 7 hours and 2 minutes.

Folded into Leonardo

By 2015 AgustaWestland employed about 12,500 people and had posted revenues of more than four billion euros. But Finmeccanica was reinventing itself as a single company. On 1 January 2016 AgustaWestland’s operations were absorbed into the group’s helicopter division, and later that year Finmeccanica renamed itself Leonardo. The AgustaWestland name disappeared, but its designs did not: the AW139, AW169, AW189 and AW149 still roll out of Vergiate, Philadelphia and Yeovil under the Leonardo badge, and in 2026 Britain signed for 23 AW149s to be built in Yeovil.

Továrny

• Cascina Costa · Samarate, Varese, Italy — Agusta’s historic home; AW189 first flight 2011
• Vergiate · Varese, Italy — AW139 and AW149 assembly; AW609 test flying
• Yeovil · Somerset, England — Former Westland works; main UK site, Wildcat and AW101
• Philadelphia · Pennsylvania, United States — Opened 2005; second AW139 line from 2007; AW119 assembly
• PZL-Świdnik · Świdnik, Poland — Acquired early 2010; builds W-3 Sokół and AW109 fuselages
• Other Italian sites · Sesto Calende, Lonate Pozzolo, Tessera (Venice), Bresso, Brindisi, Frosinone, Anagni, Benevento

Lidé

• Giuseppe Orsi · former AgustaWestland chief, Finmeccanica CEO — Arrested February 2013 over the India deal; finally acquitted May 2019
• Bruno Spagnolini · chief executive of AgustaWestland — Tried with Orsi in the India case
• James Wang · Project Zero team leader

Rekordy a prvenství

• Round-the-world helicopter speed record, AW109S Grand, 11 days 7 hours 2 minutes, August 2008
• AW139 main gearbox ran dry for 60 minutes in a 2015 test, 30 minutes longer than any other certified rotorcraft at the time
• AW189 first in its category certified by EASA with a limited ice protection system, 2015
• Project Zero won AHS International’s Grover E. Bell Award, 2014