AW169 Helicopter final assembly line to be established at AgustaWestland Philadelphia

AgustaWestland, a Finmeccanica company, released that a final assembly line for the new generation AW169 helicopter will be established at its AgustaWestland Philadelphia facility located at Northeast Philadelphia Airport in the United States of America. The first Philadelphia built AW169 helicopter will be inducted into the final assembly in May 2014 and will be delivered to the first customer in early-2015. The new production line will ramp up to produce around 20 aircraft per year by 2017. Incorporating a lean advanced manufacturing philosophy, the new AW169 production line will be scalable to accommodate production escalations based on market demand. Also AgustaWestland’s facilities in Vergiate (Italy) and Yeovil (UK) will play major roles in the manufacturing activities for the AW169 programme.