General Aviation 2.0

Redefining the route to market for innovative new aircraft

HX50 Header - Hill helicopters
HX50 Header - Hill helicopters

A Fresh Approach

Hill Helicopters has pioneered a reimagined approach to delivering and supporting safe, exciting luxury private aircraft ownership at an affordable price. We call it General Aviation 2.0.

General Aviation 2.0 (GA2.0) extends far beyond the aircraft. It is an end-to-end ownership experience delivering the aircraft you’ve always wanted and combining it with all the support you need to get the best out of private aviation.

Entirely customer focused, GA2.0 begins with our ground up, exhilarating modern aircraft design embodying all the features today’s pilots demand, while simultaneously meeting or exceeding the latest EASA and FAA airworthiness requirements. Beyond this, GA2.0 also provides an all new, safe, and fully supported ownership experience. These factors together ensure your new aircraft delivers unprecedentedly low operating costs and maintains a stable high resale value, making personal helicopter ownership more attainable than ever before.

Dual Role Approval Model

Light helicopter owners fall into two broad categories – private and commercial users. While an aircraft may meet performance requirements for both, private owners demand far more modern technology, greater luxury, frequent product refreshes, and notably different support compared to their commercial operator counterparts.

Our Dual Role Approval Model allows us to best serve the needs of both distinctly different userbases with two variants of the same aircraft. HX50 serves private owners while HC50 focuses on commercial users. Both aircraft are essentially identical, each meeting the latest EASA and FAA certification standards for small/normal category rotorcraft and both entirely factory built in our world-class UK aerospace manufacturing facility.

HX50 however is not sold with a type certificate. Instead, it receives an initial type approval from the UK CAA to the latest certification standards of EASA CS-27, meets FAA Part 27 and is provided to customers with an amateur-built airworthiness approval. Each aircraft is factory constructed during a two-week fully supported build course in the UK.

HX50 Benefits

  • Factory-built aircraft
  • Meets the latest EASA and FAA certified standards
  • Greatly enhanced design and safety features
  • Modern technology
  • Strong residual value
  • Lowest possible cost of ownership

Our commercial variant, HC50, is offered with a traditional type certificate, with the initial certification being provided by the UK CAA and subsequent type validations/acceptances following around the world.

There are only four differences between the HX50 and the HC50

  • Price
  • Time to market
  • Required owner participation in manufacture of HX50
  • Private (HX50) versus full commercial (HC50) use

By fusing the best elements of the certification process with those of recreational aviation, GA2.0 makes owner-operators the focus of the general aviation industry and, together with HX50, will trigger a long overdue renaissance in private aviation.

Certification Vs Holistic Safety

Certification does not make an aircraft any safer than one designed, manufactured, maintained, and operated in accordance with the certification standards. Certification simply means an aviation authority officially confirms the aircraft meets required airworthiness standards. In the case of privately operated aircraft, there is much more to delivering and operating a holistically safe aircraft than meeting certification requirements. The aircraft must meet the form, function, and safety needs of its end-users.

Private owners are often inexperienced pilots, and their aircraft should focus on their needs – benign handling qualities, resilience to low-g conditions, excellent stability, high power reserves, realistic payload for user requirements, robust crashworthiness, and ease of operation with minimum pilot workload.

The traditional approach to certification inhibits developing innovative new technologies and systems that meet these needs. Manufacturers turn to older, pre-approved components to minimise the cost, complexity, and timescales of certification. This unfortunately limits the ability to deliver ‘holistically safe’ aircraft.

Every Hill helicopter meets the latest EASA and FAA certification standards for normal category rotorcraft and is built in our UK CAA-approved factory. With HX50, we fuse the highest levels of airworthiness from the latest certification standards with the GA-appropriate type approval process found in amateur-built aircraft. HC50, which is essentially the same aircraft, produced in the same approved factory, is offered to the market somewhat later, with a full type certificate enabling commercial use.

The dual role approval model allows the innovative HX50 to meet the highest possible safety standards while being brought to market faster and with lower overall costs, holistically improving the safety and affordability of all light helicopters.

How the Program Works

Ownership of a Hill HX50 provides the high-performance, luxury aircraft you always wanted with the skills and knowledge you need to be a holistically safe independent owner-operator. Our approach intelligently fuses standards-meeting, factory-built aircraft with the crucial owner-operator training, education, and insight that can only be effectively delivered though involvement in the construction of your own aircraft.

HX50 not only signals a paradigm shift in aircraft design, but also in how we equip private pilots to be independent owner-operators.

HX50 Ownership includes the following crucial elements:

2-Week Factory Construction Course

  • Owner-operators participate in two-week factory workshop
  • Assemble your aircraft alongside CAA-approved production staff
  • Receive unparalleled insight into the aircraft’s inner workings, manufacturing process, and rationale behind aircraft operating procedures and limitations
  • Gain considerable advantage and safety awareness
  • Receive an unforgettable experience to launch your helicopter ownership

Safety Course

  • A comprehensive pilot safety course aimed specifically at private owner-operators and the HX50 aircraft

Maintenance Course

  • A comprehensive maintenance training course for owners or their designated licensed mechanics covering all field-approved maintenance requirements

HX50 Pilot App

An integrated cloud-based HX50 operating platform

  • Provides access to the HX50 community
  • Monitors aircraft health and status
  • Manages the aircraft and pilot logs
  • Integrates with flight data recorder functions
  • Provides access to pilot and technical support
HX50

The Ideal Option for Private Owners

For private owners, the HX50 cost model is nothing short of revolutionary. Calendar depreciation is essentially eliminated with a long 5,000-hour, on-condition TBO and no 12-year aircraft and engine overhaul requirement. Hill’s commitment to low ongoing maintenance and insurance costs drive down the remaining fixed costs, allowing the majority of entry-level private helicopter owners to keep their aircraft to themselves and avoid the perils and uncertainty of leaseback.

HC50

The Commercial Option

For those wishing to use their aircraft commercially, the Hill HC50 is the fully certified option and will be offered at a higher purchase price to support the costs of commercial use certification.

Frequently Asked Questions
Exterior Concept

Previous

Cockpit

Next

JOIN OUR GROUP PRESENTATION

Are you interested in the HX50? Book your spot in our group presentation and learn why the HX50 will be better than your current helicopter.

What's in the presentation

Who

Mischa Gelb (aka Pilot Yellow) and Ruben Dias

What

Exclusive full details about the HX50 not yet available to the public

How

30 minutes presentation + Q&A

Phone

Hill Helicopters uses a worldwide direct-to-customer approach with no resellers, distributors or agents.

Be part of the journey

Get all the relevant news and updates about the HX50 delivered to your inbox.

logo footer

HX50

Exterior Concept

Interior Concept

GT50 Turbine Engine

General Aviation 2.0

Hill Digital Cockpit

Journey to HX50

Technical Details

Range Simulator

HC50

ADDRESS

Hill Helicopters
Unit 3, Shackleton Way
Stafford, ST16 1GY
United Kingdom

General Enquiries:
+44 (0) 1384 590700
Accounts:
+44 (0) 1384 590700
Sales:
+44 (0)1889 228040
hello@hillhelicopters.com
PRIVACY POLICY

© 2024 HILL HELICOPTERS