Kaman Helicopter has developed an external passenger seat for the single-seat K-MAX helicopter. Dubbed the "Class A" seat, it weighs less than 9kg, can be fitted to either side of the aircraft and is readily detachable.
Kaman says that the seat has been produced as a result of customer demand. Kenichi Horie, project manager of the Japanese logging and powerline maintenance company KBK, says that fitting the seat will allow extra crew to join missions in remote locations. "Because of rugged terrain, sometimes it takes hours for crew to get to a site that is only a few hundred metres away," he says.
"With this seat, we can do it in minutes."
The metal seat, which is expected to receive US Federal Aviation Administration certification by the middle of this year, has been designed to carry a 90kg load, and to withstand vertical acceleration of 10G and lateral acceleration of 6G. Kaman says that the new seat has not yet been tested with "human cargo".
Source: Flight International
