Canada awards CH-146 fleet life extension contract

Bell Textron Canada was previously contracted to carry out the design work necessary to support the overhaul in 2019. Under the new contract, the manufacturer will oversee the implementation of the fleet’s renewal.

The overhaul is intended to extend the multipurpose helicopter fleet’s operational life until the mid-2030s. As the original manufacturer of the Griffon aircraft, Bell said that the government selected it to conduct the overhaul because it was ‘best suited to assess and define necessary design changes and associated repairs’.

Under the contract, Bell will perform modifications on the first nine helicopters at its Mirabel facility near Montreal, before hiring subcontractors via a competitive process to perform modifications on the remaining 76 aircraft.

Bell stated that it intends to use Canadian industry partners to support the modification of over 80 per cent of the fleet, to ‘ensure the skills and capacity to sustain the Griffon remains indigenous to Canada’.

The Griffons constitute the largest helicopter fleet operated by the RCAF. The fleet has been deployed on a wide range of missions, including assisting civilian authorities in firefighting, lifesaving and security, as well as being deployed internationally to ‘support humanitarian, peacekeeping and coalition combat operations as part of the United Nations and NATO’.