Helicopters

Airbus has achieved a green aviation first as an H225 made the first-ever helicopter flight with both of its Safran Makila 2 engines running on 100 percent Sustainable Aviation Fuel (SAF), which is usually derived from biomass.

On April 19, the one-year anniversary of its first flight, NASA's Ingenuity Mars helicopter visited and took images of the crash site of the protective aeroshell and parachute that helped deliver it and the Perseverance rover to the Red Planet.

Piasecki Aircraft is working on a full-size winged helicopter running HyPoint's air-cooled hydrogen fuel cell system – but to test that powertrain, it's converting an ultralight compound chopper for the world's first manned H2 helicopter flight.

The Lockheed Martin Sikorsky-Boeing SB>1 Defiant helicopter has completed its first long-endurance flight, with the revolutionary rotorcraft this week flying 700 nautical miles (810 miles or 1,300 km) from West Palm Beach, Florida, to Nashville, Tennessee.

DARPA's Aircrew Labor In-Cockpit Automation System (ALIAS) program has taken another step forward, with a US Army UH-60A Black Hawk helicopter taking to the air over Fort Campbell, Kentucky on February 5 for a 30-minute autonomous flight with no one aboard.

With the decision on the replacement of the US Army's UH-60 Black Hawk fleet coming down to the wire, the partners behind the SB>1 Defiant have announced that their candidate advanced rotorcraft has completed its first mission profile test flights.

Kawasaki has shoehorned the supercharged 1,000cc engine from its wild H2R hyperbike into a heavy-lift autonomous cargo helicopter, and has now demonstrated a robotic system for loading and unloading it without exposing humans to those big blades.

British company Hill Helicopters is stirring up the industry with a gorgeous, high-tech, next-gen, luxury light helicopter that's already grabbed more than a 51% market share despite the fact that it's never turned a rotor as a full-scale prototype.

Piasecki's PA-890 slowed-rotor compound helicopter will be a remarkable enough aircraft in its own right – but the company is also working with HyPoint to develop a long-range, powerful hydrogen powertrain to sell to other eVTOL manufacturers.

For about a decade now, Kaman's K-Max intermeshing rotor helicopter has been flying unmanned cargo missions for US forces in Afghanistan. Now, the K-Max Titan is becoming the world's first heavy-lift unmanned helicopter for the commercial market, having taken its first flight last week.

NASA's Ingenuity Mars helicopter has again set new records, flying farther and faster than it has previously on Earth or Mars. At an altitude of 16 ft (5 m) it flew downrange for 164 ft (50 m) at a top speed of 6.6 ft/s (2 m/s).

NASA's Ingenuity helicopter made history again today by flying horizontally on Mars for the first time. The rotorcraft lifted off and flew for 51.9 seconds, reaching an altitude of 16 ft and flying laterally for 7 ft before descending safely.