AgustaWestland, a Finmeccanica company, has announced that it handed over the 500^th AW139 to Weststar Aviation Services of Malaysia during a ceremony held at the Farnborough International Airshow. The aircraft was accepted by Tan Sri Syed Azman Syed Ibrahim, Group Managing Director of Weststar from Bruno Spagnolini, CEO, AgustaWestland. The 500^th delivery comes just one year after AgustaWestland delivered the 400^th helicopter.

Weststar Aviation Services is the largest operator of AW139 helicopters in Asia and has ordered 16 AW139s, with this aircraft being the 13^th aircraft to be delivered. Having started AW139 operations on 1^st April 2011 Weststar Aviation Services’ fleet has now flown more than 16,000 hours in support of Petronas’ and other oil companies offshore operations in peninsular Malaysia. The entire AW139 fleet has now flown over 500,000 hours. AW139 final assembly is performed at AgustaWestland’s Vergiate and Philadelphia facilities in Italy and the United States respectively. The AW139 is also set to be assembled at the HeliVert plant located in Tomilino, near Moscow.