NORTH AMERICAN NEWS
Our correspondents, led by Kenneth Swartz as our North American Editor, have been feeding in the latest helicopter operator and industry news for more than 26 years, and they're still at it! Exclusive coverage that you won't even find in the media. Typical News ...
* The 70 year old owner of a company in Florida, Peter Spitz of Russian Aircraft Services, is being prosecuted by the US Customs service for attempting to illegally sell Mil Mi-8 and Mi-24 helicopters.
Spitz was allegedly approached by a Customs undercover agent in March and asked if he could supply seven Mi-24 and three Mi-8T helicopters. After Spitz said he could and quoted a price of $750,000 each, the agent continued to negotiate the deal and on 25 March revealed the 'customer' as being a commercial company set up by a cabinet member of the Zimbabwe government. Spitz reportedly asked for $5 million to secure the sale, to be paid in instalments and commencing with two initial payments of $11,000 each.
These transactions, made on 3 April, established the dealer's intent and violated US federal law because Spitz had not obtained a defence export licence and because military sales to Zimbabwe have been banned since April 2002.
* Erickson Air Crane laid off 35 staff, mainly in the company's manufactuing division, at the end of April following a lack of new orders for its Sikorsky S-64 Skycrane firefighting conversion.
The company has remanufactured about 20 S-64s, since it purchased the design rights of the heavy lift helicopter, but still has a number of ex-military CH-54 variants in store. The layoff comes despite a new 8.5 year 200 million euro lease agreeement with the Protezione Civile in Italy.