Airbus Helicopters has been awarded a contract by the French Defence Procurement Agency (DGA) to retrofit the avionics suite of the 35 EC145 helicopters operated by the Sécurité Civile, an agency of the French Ministry of Interior that provides critical search and rescue and medical evacuation services.

As part of this retrofit, all aircraft will be equipped with an improved avionics suite ensuring all-weather capability with the highest levels of safety, while at the same time complying with the latest Performance Based Navigation regulations.

The retrofit of the 35 aircraft follows the global services solution contract for the Sécurité Civile and Gendarmerie Nationale’s EC145 fleet awarded at the end of 2015. The aircraft, with this new contract managed by the Military Support Centre France (MSC-F), will be retrofitted over a seven-year period by Airbus Helicopters personnel deployed at the Sécurité Civile base in Nîmes in order to minimise the impact on operational activity.

The mechanical and electrical modifications necessary to integrate functions such as LPV/SBAS guidance, digital maps, and GPS installations have also been optimized to reduce the length of the retrofit operations.

Established in 1957, the helicopter division of the Sécurité Civile operates a fleet of 35 EC145 on call 24/7 throughout France for search and rescue and medical evacuation missions.

The MSC-F is a dedicated Airbus Helicopters organisation designed to support all French military and state customers by providing them with the services tailored to their specific needs.