Britten-Norman’s first Islander assembled in the United Kingdom from detail component level completed its first flight from Bembridge Airport, Isle of Wight, on Thursday 3 September, and has entered its flight test program.
The aircraft is destined for the Falkland Islands Government Air Service and will move into the final stages of its program on completion of flight test.
A second airframe is progressing through the same line, components for the aircraft behind it are on order, and the company is working to a continuous production cadence with a strategic ambition of eight aircraft a year. Britten-Norman is the UK’s only civil A2 approved aircraft manufacturer.
Assembling the airframe at Bembridge gives Britten-Norman direct control of the build sequence, the tooling and the quality gates, and removes a road movement of major sub-assemblies across Europe from the middle of every aircraft. Both allow customer specification to be built in during assembly rather than fitted afterwards.
Approximately 350 Islanders are in service across more than 70 countries and six continents, and the fleet has flown around 20 million hours. Twin engine configuration with single engine inoperative capability, Lycoming O-540 and IO-540 powerplants and Hartzell variable pitch propellers are all long-established across that fleet, supported by a worldwide parts and maintenance network and by CAA, EASA and MoD design approvals. An operator taking a new Islander is taking an aircraft whose behavior on a short-wet strip is already documented across 350 aircraft and 20 million flying hours.
