Babcock lands £400m deal to train Forces chopper pilots

BABCOCK has landed a 17-year deal to train helicopter pilots for the Army, Navy and RAF as the Ministry of Defence continues to outsource nonfrontline work.

Ascent, a 50:50 joint venture between FTSE 100 group Babcock and US defence giant Lockheed Martin, has won the £1.1bn competition after a tendering process lasting almost three years.

Under the agreement, Ascent is expected to train 200 helicopter pilots a year and provide the machines on which to do so. Babcock said the contract is worth £400m to the company over its lifetime.

The trainee pilots will learn ground school and flying skills from Ascent in- structors and will take to the air in about 30 HC135 and HC145 helicopters supplied by Airbus Helicopters under a subcontracting arrangement.

The pan-European aircraft maker expects to supply 28,000 hours of flying time to Ascent under the terms of the arrangement, rather than sell them the actual helicopters.

In total the contract is expected to support 220 jobs, of which about 150 are with Airbus in engineering and support roles at RAF Shawbury, in Shropshire, where the flight training takes place, and Airbus’s UK helicopter base in Oxfordshire.

Student pilots who successfully complete the training will go on to fly helicopters including the Apache, Chinook, Merlin and Wildcat.

In February Ascent won the £1.1bn contract to train fixed-wing pilots for the MoD, and the agreement to train helicopter pilots means that all the main parts of military flight training in the UK – fixed wing, helicopter, fast jet and rear crew – have been contracted out to the private sector, in deals worth a total of £2.8bn.