ATLANTA—The new owners of MD Helicopters envision raising production to 50 helicopters a year by 2025 as the company rebuilds after exiting bankruptcy in August 2022.
The plans are part of efforts by the OEM’s new owners to turn around the company’s fortunes after what new CEO Brad Pedersen described as the “rocky heritage” of the manufacturer under different owners since it was spun off from the merger of McDonnell Douglas and Boeing in the 1990s.
Production is currently focused on the MD530F single-engine light helicopter and military variants of that platform, the Cayuse Warrior and Cayuse Warrior Plus.
Other aircraft in MD Helicopters’ product portfolio—including the single-engine MD520N and MD600 as well as the twin-engine MD902 Explorer—are not in production.
As well as growing production levels, the company also is planning to make a series of product improvements to the MD530F platform by 2025.
“We will get to a [MD530F] helicopter that provides more utility to the customer whether it’s more lift, more fuel efficiency,” Pedersen told journalists on the eve of Helicopter Association International’s Heli-Expo here March 6.
Production in 2022 was just four aircraft, in part due to uncertainty around the bankruptcy. But this is set to increase to 19 in 2023 and more than 24 in 2024.
Pedersen is hoping to secure a balanced portfolio of sales to support the ramp up, with 50% commercial and 50% defense sales, the latter from direct commercial sales and the U.S. government’s Foreign Military Sales system. The company is expected to announce defense sales of the Cayuse Warrior during Heli-Expo.
MD Helicopters chairman Ed Dolanski said the new owners—a consortium of MBIA Insurance, Bardin Hill Investment Partners LP, and MB Global Partners—were committed to supporting the company as it enjoyed what he called an “upward trajectory.” He added that they saw no reason to “get off the train.”
The consortium bought the company in a bankruptcy auction after the fund associated with Lynn Tilton’s Patriarch Partners business that owned the company went bankrupt.
MD Helicopters remained solvent and is profitable, officials insist.
“This is a brand that goes back to the Howard Hughes days,” Dolanski added. “It’s about returning it to preeminence where it was for quite some time.”
As part of the effort to rebuild, the company is on a hiring spree to support the ramp up in production. It is also working to restore the service and support mechanisms for the installed base of 1,700 aircraft around the world as well as the parts supply for those aircraft. The company is investing what Dolanski described as an “eight figure sum” to rebuild the spares resource that will go on to support customers.
“I think the biggest problems at MD [previously] were all self-generated by the [former] management,” Pedersen said. “We were trying to take a humble approach to this, trying to listen. We’re going to move forward and fix what’s broken.”
In recent days, the company has closed out a long-running dispute with Aerometals over copyright and also has built closer relations with Boeing to cooperate on the AH-6 Little Bird platform, which shares a similar airframe to the MD530F.
But the outlook looks bleak for the restart in production of the twin-engine MD902 or further investment in the company’s No Tail Rotor (NOTAR) anti-torque system technology.
Pedersen says the company is trying to support the MD902 “where it can,” but the production line for the aircraft has been dormant for 10 years, as has the supply chain for components.
“The MD902 is a difficult discussion, and we don’t have a path forward right now,” Pedersen says.
In 2016, MD Helicopters had claimed it was making investments in the NOTAR technology, but Pedersen says there is no evidence of these efforts.
“The question is from a business standpoint, where do we spend our time focusing, and what’s the biggest bang for the buck?” Pedersen says.
NOTAR, he suggests, is not a priority.
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