POWERFUL: Kapiti Heliworx owner Dennis Young with a AS350 B2 Squirrel.
A sleek black coloured mechanical bird has made an impressive entrance into the Kapiti district's airspace.
Kapiti Heliworx's latest addition is a seven seater AS350 B2 Squirrel from the Ukraine, and manufactured by Airbus.
"It's only six years old and has a total of 235 hours," Kapiti Heliworx owner Dennis Young said.
"It's beautiful to fly and feels strong."
Mr Young said the aircraft, which has a cruising speed of 120 knots, had the capacity to fly to Auckland if required.
It could burn through 180 litres of jet fuel an hour "which is like three average car tanks, so the engine is hungry".
"It takes 540 litres to fill the tank with jet fuel."
The flight control panel has been simplified to make the pilot's workload easier.
The chopper, which the company is mainly using for passenger trips, has had a hook added to it which will allow it to help with firefighting next year, enabling it to be the biggest fulltime aerial firefighting unit on the coast.
"We will be able to lift 1000kg, which is one tonne."
The aircraft, which has the Kapiti News and Newstalk ZB logos on it, has a fibreglass rotorhead and the blades are all composite.
"All in all a very nice aircraft and we're very fortunate to be operating it," Mr Young said.
Interestingly this type of aircraft has the world record for the highest altitude landing, when Didier Delsalle flew a Eurocopter AS350 Squirrel B3 - very similar to the B2 model - and touched down on the summit of Mt Everest on May 14, 2005.
