Last week was graduation day in Grand Prairie, Texas for six pilots and 10 maintenance technicians from the Royal Thai Army. This was the first group to travel to Airbus Helicopters’ Texas training facility to spend weeks training on the twin-engine UH-72A Lakota helicopter, and all the hard work finally paid off. The second group of trainees has already arrived and begun their indoctrination into the finer points of operating and maintaining the six UH-72As obtained by the Royal Thai Army as part of the first foreign military sale of the helicopter by Airbus Group.
“These first deliveries and training mark the beginning of a long-term partnership in support of this important U.S. ally,” said Allan McArtor, chairman and CEO of Airbus Group. In a little more than nine years Airbus Helicopters has delivered more than 330 Lakotas from the company's assembly plant in Columbus, Miss.
