Uni-Fly of Denmark has selected an EC135T2i helicopter following the award of a five-year contract to provide support to an offshore wind farm on the east coast of England in December 2014. Md Jorgen Erik Andersen says that it is performing very well so far: “The EC135T2i is one of very few helicopters able to operate an offshore hoist to wind turbines, while carrying a reasonable load.”

The company now operates two EC135T2i in support of offshore wind turbines, one in Denmark and one in the UK. It also flies two EC120s onshore for power line inspection, gas and oil line inspection, sling operation, and passenger transportation.

Andersen is impressed with the features on his latest aircraft, including upgraded Garmin 750 avionics, dual hoist capability on the left or right side, and the emergency life raft system from Airbus Helicopters.

“The nature of the offshore environment being moist and salty, plus challenging weather and wind speeds, are some of the difficulties we face,” Andersen continues. “We do hoist operations up to wind speeds around 45 to 50 kts. We do precautionary maintenance on helicopters to a very high standard to avoid down time for our customers.”

He suggests that there could be a growing market for hoist oper-ations to offshore turbines, as the turbines are increasing in size and are being placed increasingly further from shore.

To date Uni-Fly has performed more than 28,000 successful hoist operations to offshore wind turbines, offshore installations and ships from its Danish base.