Poorly written contract grounds UK CH-47

June 3, 2008 by Dagpotter · Comment
Filed under: Boeing, Contract Awards, England, Military Aviation, production program 

In 2001 the British military purchased 8 CH-47 Chinooks to support special operations. Unfortunately the contract did not buy access to the aircraft source code for the software. This meant that the UK military could not certify the aircraft for any but day operations. See a story here. This has meant that the aircraft have sat for seven years not being used. At one point the UK government planned to convert them to regular cargo CH-47 aircraft but used the money for other things in the end. Obviously a clause to allow access to the technical data would have driven up the price a bit, but it would have allowed the military to certify the aircraft for night and bad weather operations. As it is there has been little gained by buying these aircraft, at really no fault of Boeing.

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Canada requests old US helicopters for Aghanistan

February 10, 2008 by Dagpotter · Comment
Filed under: Boeing, Canada, production program 

According to this story in The Canadian Press, Canada is requesting from the US older CH-47D aircraft to support their efforts in Afghanistan. Canada is planning on buying some CH-47F, but until those are available they are trying to get some refurbished US Army aircraft. Read more

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