Airbus H125 Helicopter Nova Scotia DNR

Flying in Nova Scotia, this is where I always saw myself flying in my career when I first was interested in aviation. I grew up in the area, I worked in every province and territory in Canada and Nova Scotia is the perfect spot. We've got the coastline, we've got some mountainous regions and high hill terrain and just beautiful sceneries at every turn. We have over 4,500 kilometers of coastline in our province and the weather changes minute to minute sometimes. So in wintertime we have a fair amount of snow and high winds. We've got an extended spring and fall period, we get high winds and rains there and we've got some beautiful long summer days as well. We're located in Shubenacadie which is central to the province of Nova Scotia and we cover the entire province. Here at Aviation Services we operate a fleet of four H125 aircraft and we operate them in a multi-mission role for forestry, mining, natural resource support. For all provincial government departments and agencies. We needed an aircraft that was larger than our MD500s and the H120 but again smaller than the Bell 212 that we had. So we find that the Airbus is a perfect fit for a multi-mission, multi-role aircraft. We can carry two and a half times the water that we could before. We can fly for 30 minutes longer than we could with our older fleet and it allows us the versatility to customize the aircraft to the needs for each mission. We're really excited to have an all-glass cockpit for the first time. We got away from steam gauges so we've got terrain and obstacle avoidance systems in place. We've got multiple GPSs for our different mission capabilities and the cockpit can be changed to suit our passenger or cargo needs. The benefits of having a standardized fleet, for us it's pilot training so we don't have multiple types to be training on every year. It's just the one type for us. Also for the maintenance department you know so if we have to swap parts everything's all the same now. And also for our customers we pretty much you know once they see one helicopter at our various training sessions that we hold all over the province then they're good for all of our aircraft because they're all the same now. Unlike in the past we had three types at one point here. So in addition to our natural resource-based work the aircraft are also used for inland search and rescue in Nova Scotia. Nova Scotia has 23 teams with 1400 volunteers across the province and our aircraft regularly support those teams in search for lost persons. The paint scheme on the new aircraft we feel is quite striking. It draws the colours out of our provincial Nova Scotia flag. It was important to us for fire operations and search operations to have very visible numbers on the side of the airframe as well as in the belly. The H125 for us is is the perfect machine. It's fast, it has great range, great lift capabilities and is extremely versatile aircraft. Pilots certainly enjoy the comfort of the new aircraft. They enjoy the visibility. It's been a great fit into our operation.