AW609 titlrotor programme completes ship trial and looks to next phase
AW609 ship trials took place in April. (Photo: Leonardo)
The first Leonardo AW609 tiltrotor production aircraft made its maiden flight on 13 October 2022 which included an initial inflight evaluation of systems and general handling and it has now completed a ship trial.
Leonardo announced on 25 June that it had successfully completed ship trials of its AW609 titlrotor aircraft and was assessing the results of the landing and looking to use that information to move onto the next phase of the trials.
The trial took place in early April and involved the Italian Navy’s ITS Cavour aircraft carrier which was operating 20nm at sea. The aircraft, C4 in the production programme, took off from Maristaer Grottaglie Naval Base and according to the company demonstrated its “its effective approach, stable deck landing, and touchdown capabilities”.
“Integral to the demonstration phase was an initial test campaign developed and executed in a full synthetic environment leveraging the AW609 development/engineering simulator located in Cascina Costa,” the company said.
The trials were supported by the use of a digital twin to provide a preliminary assessment of manoeuvres and activities which were then performed in the trial in an effort to support capability development, time reduction, safety and sustainability.
The company added: “[Under digital twin] deck landing and take-off procedures were performed in more than 15 different conditions (including wind conditions), featuring straight-in and lateral approach, vertical landing, vertical take-off, and lateral exit.”
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