On any given day, the shop floor of Bell Textron Prague is a testament to its location. Centered in the heart of Europe, it has become the maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) facility — and more recently, a component repair and overhaul (CRO) center — for Bell customers in the region and beyond.
On this day, several wooden crates containing the components of a 407 recently arrived from Mirabel, Quebec, for a customer in Nigeria, wait to be assembled. Nearby, a 429 owned by a customer in New Zealand is in the final stages of an interior completion, next to a 407 GXI evacuated from Ukraine during the first days of the war, and a 412 recently arrived from Montenegro. In another corner of the triple bay facility, three more Bell helicopters are receiving undisclosed refurbishments for unnamed customers.
Located at the Václav Havel Airport, the Bell Textron Prague facility is a hub for both private operators and parapublic organizations such as the Police of the Czech Republic, which has operated Bell 412s for the past two decades and was the first European customer for the 412EPI.
Together with Bell Textron service centers in Amsterdam, Kent in the United Kingdom, and Valencia in Spain — specializing in helicopter spares, customization and rotor blade repair, and pilot training, respectively — Bell Textron Prague and its partners can “provide a one-stop shop for MRO, unscheduled retrofits, and modifications,” said Jaroslav Hajecek, aftermarket sales manager.
The center does not bill itself as a military facility per se — “we are not doing armament and mission computers,” said Stanislav Stefanov, military sales and strategy manager Europe — but it holds supplemental type certificates for a number of airframes and has the ability to complete NATO tenders.
Rather, it is slowly growing a parapublic business. That includes three Bell 407GXi aircraft for the Polish National Police (PNP), for which it did systems integration on green airframes in 2020-2021, and support to a PNP 412 and two 206s. In March, Bell Textron and the PNP announced a purchase agreement for four more 407GXi. A few months before, the company closed a purchase agreement with the Republic of Croatia’s Ministry of Interior for two Subaru Bell 412EPX helicopters and, in 2020, it signed a deal with the Montenegro Air Force for two Bell 505 Jet Ranger X helicopters manufactured by Bell Textron Canada in Mirabel.
It is also targeting neighbors like Slovenia, where the National Police Force operates a 412 and the Army Air Support Unit conducts a variety of missions with a fleet of 412s.
“We are slowly trying to tie in other government entities,” Hajecek explained.
Not all the in-service support for those airframes will necessarily go through Prague, he noted, “but there is a growing fleet of Bell 412 aircraft in the Balkan area. We are very happy about this. It’s a very reliable airframe.”
That customization experience with parapublic operators might pay dividends in the near future. With Bell Textron proposing to modify several of its helicopters as special mission aircraft, especially for Eastern European operators struggling with the effects of economic sanctions levied at Russia, Bell Textron Prague could be well positioned to play a supporting role.
At the Army Aviation Mission Solutions Summit in Nashville, Tennessee in late April, Bell Textron publicly unveiled the 407M special mission aircraft, part of a strategy to offer civil helicopters configured with commercial avionics and “flexible mission systems” for a range of military missions, including armed reconnaissance, special operations, light-attack, anti-piracy, medical evacuation, combat search-and-rescue, and humanitarian aid/disaster relief.
In a statement, the company said the “M” designated aircraft could be tailored to countries that need “an efficient and effective aviation platform.” The 407 is the first to be fitted with guns and rockets, but the company is also planning to modify the 412, 429, and 505 for either foreign military or direct commercial sale.
“Many of the military operating environments around the world require an option in between pure military and commercial platforms, and special mission aircraft can support that flexibility,” said Brian Vollmer, Bell Textron’s special mission aircraft program manager.
“When you look at the market of fielded systems and how current sanctions may limit parts availability, there is a need for affected countries to act quickly to avoid a capability gap when parts are no longer available for their existing platforms,” he noted.
That’s a gap Bell Textron Prague could readily fill.
Bell Textron acquired the facility in Prague in 2010 from an aviation service company focused on avionics systems integration. Bell’s initial plans might have revolved around an aircraft delivery center, but the facility has rapidly grown to a full MRO and, as of two years ago, CRO provider.
“We want to provide a full package” of engineering and customization capabilities, said Hajecek. “We can take a medical ship and convert it to a VIP aircraft and vice versa — we have done both.”
For the customization of the 412 from Montenegro, “almost everything is done in house,” he added. “Most of the repair and overhaul for all the dynamic components in the aircraft was done within the facility, with help of other [Bell] centers.”
As of now, Bell Textron Prague does not have a sustainment role in the Armed Forces of the Czech Republic acquisition of 12 Bell H-1 aircraft, but it is watching the program with interest. The first of four AH-1Z Viper attack helicopters and eight UH-1Y Venom utility helicopters are expected this month. LOM Praha, a state-owned enterprise, has been tasked with the in-service support.
“At this moment, it is a purely government-to-government deal, so commercial facilities are not involved,” said Hajecek. “If it evolves in the future into something different, I’m all for it. There is a good business case to that. But right now, it is really being taken care of through the offsets with LOM.”
Poland’s decision to expand its fleet of 407GXi aircraft “is a great example of a country bordering Ukraine that’s started to invest financial and human resources into protecting their country,” he added. “For years, public spending in the region for military and public safety has been low. Now, governments are starting to put money either in their military or public security helicopters.”
Hajecek admitted his favorite projects are when “somebody pulls a helicopter out of the bushes and wants to give it a new life. That is my dream customer to catch. It is really something this facility can excel at — we can give the customer a complete overhaul on the airframe and breath new life into an aircraft.”
Those might be the rare gems in his line of work. The more likely scenario for business development in the coming years could be an increase in parapublic requests for special mission aircraft.
