PT6B-37A to Power Mercy Flight’s 4 AW119Kx Helicopters

Pratt & Whitney Canada, a business unit of Pratt & Whitney, today that announced Mercy Flight Central, a critical care helicopter operator serving the Finger Lakes, Central and Southern Adirondack Regions of New York State, will renew its fleet with the purchase of four new Leonardo AW119Kx helicopters powered by the PT6B-37A engine.

“Mercy Flight Central plays a critical role in the public health system, poised at a moment’s notice to transport patients and giving them often life-saving critical care while in flight,” said Nicolas Chabée, vice president, sales & marketing, Helicopters, Pratt & Whitney Canada. “The single engine AW119Kx has proven itself over the years to be a reliable workhorse in a variety of missions and configurations. The PT6B-37A engine has reliability and availability performance metrics that exceed industry benchmarks.”

“As Mercy Flight Central evaluated options for our replacement aircraft, we focused on equipment that would serve our needs for decades to come,” said Jeff Bartkoski, President and CEO, Mercy Flight Central. “The AW119Kx with the PT6B engine was our clear #1 choice. The engine provides us with an outstanding record of reliability and performance, while achieving efficiencies that exceeded other alternatives.”

With the fleet exceeding 2.8 million hours, the 1,000-shaft horsepower class PT6B engine series has been produced in seven models and currently powers a wide range of missions including humanitarian, firefighting, law enforcement, security and defence, VIP transport, and others. Roughly 1,500 PT6B series engines have been manufactured to-date, almost half of which are still flying.

“The entire Pratt & Whitney Canada engine fleet has flown more than 960 million hours which speaks to the company’s breadth of product experience and the premium we place on performance, reliability, and safety. These attributes have helped to make the AW119Kx an enormous success in the single-engine light-helicopter market,” said Chabée.