page_title: AgustaWestland AW609
section_title: Testing
hierarchical_section_title: AgustaWestland AW609 / Development / Testing
caption_attribution_description: English: A Bell/Agusta BA609 in airplane mode during the 2008 Farnborough Airshow.
context_page_description: The AgustaWestland AW609, formerly the Bell/Agusta BA609, is a twin-engined tiltrotor VTOL aircraft with a configuration similar to that of the Bell Boeing V-22 Osprey. It is capable of landing vertically like a helicopter while having a range and speed in excess of conventional rotorcraft. The AW609 is aimed at the civil aviation market, in particular VIP customers and offshore oil and gas operators.
context_section_description: On 6 December 2002, the first ground tests of the BA609 prototype began, and the first flight took place on 6 March 2003 in Arlington, Texas, flown by test pilots Roy Hopkins and Dwayne Williams. After 14 hours of helicopter-mode flight testing, the prototype was moved to a ground testing rig to study the operational effects of the conversion modes. Following the completion of ground-based testing, on 3 June 2005 the prototype resumed flight testing, focusing on the expansion of its flight envelope. On 22 July 2005, the first conversion from helicopter to aeroplane mode while in flight took place. By October 2008, 365 flight-hours had been logged by two prototype aircraft. The AW609 demonstrated a safe dual-engine failure in normal cruise flight on 15 May 2009. By February 2012, this had risen to 650 hours, and it was reported that 85 percent of the AW609's flight envelope had been explored. Test pilot Paul Edwards has stated that the AW609 was not susceptible to the vortex ring state phenomena, naturally slipping out of the vortex on its own since both rotors will not simultaneously enter the vortex ring state.
  In 2011, AgustaWestland began construction of a third prototype; that prototype was still not fully assembled by February 2015.  The company plans to conduct test flights in Italy in the summer of 2015.  AgustaWestland planned to then disassemble it and ship it to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to prepare it for tests of the de-icing system in Minnesota. A fourth prototype, to be used in the development and testing of new avionics and control systems, was also underway. By November 2012, over 700 flight hours had been accumulated by the two operational prototypes. In January 2014, it was reported that in excess of 850 flying hours had been accumulated by the two prototypes; accumulated flight data is used to further develop representative simulators, which are in turn being used to support the development program.
  By March 2015, the two prototype aircraft had accumulated 1,200 hours (of about 2,000 hours necessary for certification), and two more aircraft were expected to fly that year. Flight test maximums had progressed to a weight of 18,000 lb (8,200 kg), a speed of 293 kn (337 mph; 543 km/h), and 30,000 ft (9,100 m) altitude. In 2015, AgustaWestland reported that the AW609 flew 721 miles (1,161 km) from Yeovil, UK, to Milan, Italy, in 2 hours 18 minutes. In September 2015, the first AW609 prototype was reportedly nearing the end of its service life, while a third prototype was finishing construction at the company's Vergiate facility and a fourth prototype was being built in Philadelphia.
  On 30 October 2015, the second of the two prototypes (N609AG) crashed near AgustaWestland's Vergiate facility in north west Italy, killing both pilots.
caption: An AW609 performing a flight demonstration in airplane mode at the 2008 Farnborough Airshow
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