The Australian Army’s 5th Aviation Regiment receives a Leonardo AW139 helicopter, which will serve with the unit at the RAAF Base in Townsville, Queensland. Credit: CAPT Bethany Gallagher/© Commonwealth of Australia, Department of Defence.

Australian helicopter services provider Toll Helicopters has placed an order with Leonardo for two AW139 intermediate twin-engine helicopters.

Announced by Leonardo via a media release on 1 March, the two new helicopters will join the existing fleet of three AW139 rotorcraft that are provided by Toll to support the Australian Defence Force’s (ADF) wide range of missions.

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Delivery of the two newly ordered helicopters is expected in the second half of this year. With the two new helicopters, the overall existing fleet of AW139s with Toll will increase to 12.

The two aircraft will be delivered from Leonardo’s final assembly line in Vergiate, located in Italy’s Varese province.

Once delivered, the two new helicopters will allow the Brisbane-headquartered company to fulfil the contract requirements of the ADF’s two main programmes.

It includes the Crash Response Helicopter Service programme for the Australian Army’s 1st Aviation Regiment in Darwin, and the Army Commercial Helicopter programme, which is based out of the Australian Army’s 5th Aviation Regiment in Townsville.

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The AW139 multi-role helicopters are designed to support a variety of pilot and aircrew training activities, emergency response operations, utility support, and disaster relief missions.

It features a cargo hook, searchlight, and hoist, and it can support Electro-Optical/Infra-Red equipment.

AW139 is also equipped with advanced navigation and collision avoidance systems to meet the various ‘stringent requirements’ of the users to operate in complex and harsh environments.

According to Leonardo, so far, the company has provided approximately 60 AW139 helicopters to multiple Australian operators for supporting defence, medical evacuation, search and rescue, and law enforcement operations.

Leonardo’s AW139 is also in service with other military forces across the globe.

In 2017, Leonardo received a contract to deliver additional AW139 helicopters to Pakistan.

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