SA332 Super Puma Eurocopter H215

The Eurocopter AS332 Super Puma is a four-bladed, twin-engine, medium-size utility helicopter marketed for both civil and military use. This helicopter was originally designed and manufactured by the French Company Aérospatiale. The Aerospatiale SA 332 Super Puma is a development of the S A 330 Puma with more powerful Turbomeca Makila turboshafts, multipurpose air intakes, lightweight Starflex rotor head with uprated transmission and thermically de-iced main rotor blades, and wider-track landing gear with single wheels. Most of these features have already been test-flown on modified SA 330 Pumas, and a fully representative SA 332 Super Puma prototype first flew on 13 September 1978. Production of this new version was commenced in August 1978, with the first completed SA 332C civil example delivered (to Petroleum Helicopters) in 1981. In its initial commercial form, the SA 332 Super Puma has the same capacity as the SA 330 (two crew plus 19 passengers) but markedly superior performance. Yet greater capability is offered by the 'stretched' version, the SA 332L Super Puma, the prototype of which first flew on 10 October 1980. Compared with the basic SA 332 Super Puma, the SA 332L has its fuselage lengthened by 0.76 m in, and an extra window has been added on each side of the forward fuselage. The 'stretch' increases passenger capacity to 24, and the increased payload with the same fuel capacity initially meant reduced payload/range performance. However, Aerospatiale has now developed swept-back tips for the rotor-blade tips, and this permits an initial increase in maximum take-off weight of 200 kg, with another increase of 200 kg to be certificated later. The effect of this weight increase is to boost the range performance of the SA 332L to a figure closely comparable to that of the SA 332.