Seven minutes past seven, 8,848 metres up

At 07:08 Nepal time on 14 May 2005, a small single-engine helicopter settled onto the snow at the summit of Mount Everest. Test pilot Didier Delsalle held it there for 3 minutes and 50 seconds, one skid on the snowpack, before lifting off again. The Fédération Aéronautique Internationale certified it as the highest landing and take-off ever made. The aircraft was an AS350 B3 Écureuil, and the company that built it was Eurocóptero — a firm that had existed for barely thirteen years.

Two rivals, one rotor

Eurocopter was born in 1992 out of two old rivals. France’s Aérospatiale brought the helicopter dynasty of Sud Aviation — the Alouette, the Puma, the Gazelle, the Dauphin and the Ecureuil — and some 8,700 helicopters already sold. Germany’s Deutsche Aerospace brought the MBB line: the nimble Bo 105 and the BK 117 built with Kawasaki. Aérospatiale took 70 per cent, the Germans 30. Two co-chairmen, Jean-François Bigay and Heinz Plückthun, ran a company with two centres of gravity: Marignane on the Mediterranean and Donauwörth on the Danube.

A loss, then a long climb

It did not start gloriously. In 1993 the new company posted its first annual loss, 462 million French francs, and cut 1,000 jobs. But the merger gave Europe something it had never had: one helicopter maker big enough to take on the Americans. By 1996 some 8,000 of its helicopters were flying in 130 countries. Revenue passed 2 billion euros in 2000, reached 3.8 billion in 2006 and hit 6.3 billion in 2012, when the company delivered 475 helicopters. In 2000 its parents merged into EADS, and Eurocopter became a wholly owned subsidiary.

The Squirrel, the Colibri and the bestsellers

The money came from workhorses. The Écureuil, sold in America as the AStar, became the go-to machine for tour operators, police forces and mountain rescue; in 2012 the Écureuil, Fennec and EC130 family alone took 249 orders. The EC135, which flew on 15 February 1994 and grew out of MBB’s Bo 108 demonstrator, became an air-ambulance standard. The EC120 Colibri was built with China’s CATIC and Singapore Technologies, and later assembled in Harbin. The EC130 entered service in 2001 with Blue Hawaiian Helicopters, flying tourists over volcanoes and the Grand Canyon.

Tigers, NH90s and a US Army win

The military side was harder going. The Tiger attack helicopter flew on 27 April 1991, but it took until 2003 to enter service; France and Germany had once planned 427 of them before the Cold War ended. The NH90, built by NHIndustries with Agusta and Fokker, flew in 1995 and became the first production helicopter with full fly-by-wire controls. The big win came in 2006, when the US Army chose a militarised EC145 as the UH-72 Lakota — a contract worth about 3 billion dollars for 345 helicopters, built in Columbus, Mississippi.

Cracks in the Super Puma

Then came the gearboxes. In May and October 2012, two EC225 Super Pumas ditched in the North Sea after crews were warned of main gearbox lubrication failure. Investigators found a 360-degree crack in a bevel gear shaft near a weld. All aboard survived, but the October ditching grounded much of the fleet worldwide and shook the offshore industry’s faith in its favourite heavy helicopter. Redesigned shafts went into all 49 North Sea H225s by mid-2015.

The last trick of the name

Eurocopter’s parting shot was speed. On 7 June 2013, its X3 demonstrator — a helicopter with stubby wings and two propellers — reached 472 km/h in level flight, an unofficial record for a helicopter. Months later the name itself was retired: on 2 January 2014, as EADS rebranded around Airbus, Eurocopter became Helicópteros Airbus. The X3 went to a museum; the company, its factories and its entire product line carried on under the new name.

Fábricas

• Marignane · Marseille Provence Airport, Bouches-du-Rhône, France — Head office and main French plant, inherited from Aérospatiale
• Donauwörth · Bavaria, Germany — Head office of Eurocopter Deutschland; EC135 and EC145 assembly
• Ottobrunn · near Munich, Germany — Former MBB development site, moved to Donauwörth in 2013
• Kassel · Hesse, Germany — Maintenance, equipment and technical training
• La Courneuve · near Paris, France — Rotor blade works opened in 1917; relocation to Dugny announced in 2011
• Columbus · Mississippi, USA — Assembly of the UH-72 Lakota
• Albacete · Spain — Eurocopter Spain, added as a third industrial pillar from 2005

Gente

• Jean-François Bigay · co-chairman and chief executive — Led the company 1992–1998 and again 2000–2003
• Heinz Plückthun · co-chairman (from MBB) — German co-chairman at the 1992 founding
• Fabrice Brégier · chief executive 2003–2006 — Left to become chief operating officer of Airbus
• Lutz Bertling · chief executive 2006–2013 — Oversaw growth to a record €6.3 billion turnover in 2012
• Guillaume Faury · chief executive from March 2013 — Former EC225 chief engineer; led the rebrand to Airbus Helicopters, later CEO of Airbus
• Didier Delsalle · test pilot — Landed an AS350 B3 on the summit of Everest on 14 May 2005

Récords y primicias

• Highest helicopter landing and take-off, summit of Everest, 8,848 m, 14 May 2005, FAI-certified
• X3 reached 472 km/h (255 kt) in level flight, 7 June 2013, an unofficial helicopter speed record
• NH90: first production helicopter with full fly-by-wire flight controls