Airbus Helicopters

As of October 2026 – A yellow helicopter touches down on the hospital roof, the tail rotor disappears into a round tube in the fin, two large doors open under the tail boom and the stretcher is pushed out. A few kilometers away, a blue-and-silver police helicopter circles, smaller but with the same tube in the tail. Both aircraft very likely share the same origin: Donauwörth, the German plant of Airbus Helicopters. Anyone interested in helicopters in Germany cannot get around this manufacturer – and with a few basic rules, you can quickly place its types.

Two roots, one manufacturer

Airbus Helicopters is not a company cast in one piece but the result of a German-French merger. On the French side stand Sud-Aviation and later Aérospatiale, which grew big with types such as the Alouette, Puma and Gazelle. On the German side stands the line of Bölkow and Messerschmitt-Bölkow-Blohm (MBB). Its most famous product, the Bo 105, first flew in Ottobrunn on February 16, 1967, and became the epitome of the German rescue and police helicopter. Among the first customers after certification in 1970 were the air rescue service of the ADAC (Germany’s automobile club) and the Bavarian police.

In 1992, Aérospatiale and DASA, to which MBB now belonged, merged their helicopter divisions. The new company was called Eurocopter, had its headquarters in Marignane near Marseille and a strong German base in Donauwörth. With the founding of EADS in 2000, Eurocopter became fully part of the group that is now called Airbus. At the start of 2014, the new name came: Airbus Helicopters. A year later, the model names followed – the EC135 became the H135, the EC145 T2 the H145.

For you as a spotter, this history is more than company chronicle. It explains why the type designations are so colorful. SA stands for Sud-Aviation, AS for Aérospatiale, Bo for Bölkow, BK for the cooperation of MBB and Kawasaki, EC for Eurocopter and H for the current Airbus generation. Many helicopters in the sky still carry one of the old designations, and in the type codes almost all of them live on.

Donauwörth: the German heart

The small town at the confluence of the Wörnitz and the Danube is to the German helicopter industry what Hamburg-Finkenwerder is to the A320. According to Airbus, more than 7,000 people work at the site. The management of Airbus Helicopters Deutschland GmbH sits here, and the final assembly lines for the H135, the H145, its military version H145M and the NH90 transport helicopter run here. In 2013, development at the German branch also moved from Ottobrunn near Munich to Donauwörth.

Less well known is the plant’s second specialty: aircraft doors. Donauwörth makes passenger and cargo doors for the Airbus airliners A320, A330 and A350. So when you photograph an A350 or an A320neo at an airport fence, there is a good chance a piece of Donauwörth is in it.

The second German site is Kassel, with according to Airbus a good 500 employees who look after dynamic systems – that is, gearboxes and rotor components – as well as maintenance. A fitting acquisition was announced at the end of 2022: Airbus Helicopters bought the gearbox specialist ZF Luftfahrttechnik from Kassel-Calden and continues it as Airbus Helicopters Technik.

H135: the small all-rounder

The H135 is the direct successor to the Bo 105. As the EC135, it first flew in February 1994 and entered service in 1996. Two turbines, a hingeless four-blade rotor, skids and – unlike its predecessor – a Fenestron in the tail: this combination made it Europe’s standard helicopter for air rescue and police. Depending on the version, the maximum takeoff weight is just under three metric tons.

In Germany, you meet the H135 in many roles. The federal police (Bundespolizei), several state police forces and the major air rescue organizations have or had it in large numbers. The Bundeswehr also uses it for training. You can hardly recognize newer aircraft from the outside, but you can by the cockpit: current versions have the Helionix avionics system with large screens.

Since March 2025, the H135 has had a bigger brother: the H140. It is based on the H135 but has more cabin space, a five-blade rotor, a T-tail, clamshell doors at the rear and a somewhat higher-set tail boom at the back. According to Airbus, the newcomer reached 61 firm orders by the end of 2025 – with the first deliveries it will gradually turn up in the sky.

H145: the bestseller

If one helicopter embodies the current Airbus program, it is the H145. Its line goes back to the BK 117, which MBB developed together with Kawasaki. From it came the EC145, which took off on its first flight in Donauwörth on June 12, 1999. The modernized version with Fenestron and new engines received its certification in 2014 as the EC145 T2 and has been called the H145 since 2015. In 2020 followed the version with a five-blade rotor, to which older aircraft can also be retrofitted.

In 2025, according to Airbus, the H145 was again the manufacturer’s best-selling type with 149 orders – in the civil, government and military markets. Typical are its large clamshell doors at the rear, through which the stretcher is loaded on rescue aircraft. At Rega in Switzerland (the Swiss air rescue service), at German air rescue operators, at police forces and at the Bundeswehr, it is today one of the most common helicopters of all.

For the Bundeswehr, the military variant H145M is central. In December 2023, Germany first ordered 62 aircraft plus 20 options, and in November 2024 the armed forces took delivery of the first in Donauwörth. In 2025, Germany exercised the option, bringing the total to 82. With the army (Heer), the type runs as a light attack helicopter.

H135 or H145? How to tell them apart

The two Donauwörth bestsellers look similar at first glance: skids, large cockpit glazing, Fenestron. With three features, you can still separate them reliably.

The fastest way is the tail. If you see a large vertical flap under the tail boom, it is an H145. If the boom, on the other hand, runs seamlessly out of the narrow fuselage, you have an H135 in front of you. Caution with the new H140: it also has rear doors but a T-tail and five blades on an H135-like fuselage. You recognize the old EC145 without the T2 by its open tail rotor instead of a Fenestron – just like the even older BK 117. The article Recognizing helicopter types explains it in more detail.

The rest of the family at a glance

Besides the two Donauwörth types, Airbus Helicopters builds a broad range that is mostly final-assembled in Marignane. For spotters in Central Europe, some of them are everyday sights, others rare guests.

If you are looking for historic types, you can still find the classics of the predecessor companies occasionally in service and in museums: the Gazelle, the Alouette III, the Puma and of course the Bo 105, which was retired by the German army in December 2016 after decades as an anti-tank helicopter. A large collection of German helicopter history is shown by the Helicopter Museum Bückeburg.

How to recognize Airbus helicopters

The most important family feature is the Fenestron, a shrouded tail rotor in the vertical fin. It first flew in 1968 on the Gazelle, and today the H130, H135, H140, H145 and H160 carry it. It is quieter than an open tail rotor and safer for ground personnel. So if you see a round opening with many small blades in the fin, Airbus as the manufacturer is very likely.

Not every Airbus helicopter has one, though. The H125, H175, H215, H225, NH90 and Tiger fly with an open tail rotor. For them, size, landing gear and fuselage shape help: the single-engine H125 is slim and has skids, the heavy offshore types have retractable wheeled landing gear, and the Tiger has a tandem cockpit for two crew members one behind the other.

Where to see the helicopters

Unlike airliners, helicopters follow no schedule that reveals place and time. The most reliable are rescue stations and hospitals with a helipad. In Germany, rescue helicopters carry the callsign “Christoph” with a number or a place name, and many of them are H135s or H145s. In Switzerland, Rega flies H145s.

It is also worth a look at commercial airports: police and rescue helicopters often have their own stations there, and factory or ferry flights make stopovers. At Munich Airport and Nuremberg Airport, you repeatedly see helicopters from the visitor area. The headquarters in Marignane lies directly at Marseille Provence Airport, where with some luck you can catch new aircraft in factory colors.

For military variants such as the H145M, NH90 and Tiger, airshows are the best opportunity. The Bundeswehr Open Day and the ILA in Berlin show the aircraft up close. How to attribute military helicopters is explained in the article on Bundeswehr aircraft markings.

Finding helicopters in tracking

Many civil helicopters transmit ADS-B and thus show up in the common flight tracking services. Because they fly low, though, reception often drops out as soon as they disappear behind hills or buildings. Military and some police flights are not visible at all or only patchily. Plan with a buffer and use the type codes EC35 and EC45 as filters. How this works in practice is covered in the article Finding helicopters on the flight tracker; general tips for notifications are in Setting up alerts.

Airbus Helicopters in competition

The most important competitor in Europe is the Italian manufacturer Leonardo, formerly AgustaWestland. Its AW139 and AW169 compete directly with the H145 and H160, and the AW109 was long a workhorse of Rega, which has since replaced it with the H145. By the open tail rotor, you quickly tell the Leonardo types from the Fenestron types from Donauwörth and Marignane. The engines of many Airbus helicopters, such as the Arriel and Arrius families, by the way, come from Safran.

By its own account, Airbus Helicopters holds the largest market share worldwide in civil and government helicopters; in 2025, according to Airbus, it was 51 percent of orders in this segment and 28 percent in the military market. Such values fluctuate from year to year, but the picture remains: in Europe, the helicopter above you very likely comes from Airbus.

Conclusion

Airbus Helicopters is the manufacturer whose aircraft you hear above you most often in Germany – usually without noticing. Behind the name lie decades of German-French helicopter history, from the Bo 105 to the new H140. Donauwörth is more than a plant: this is where the H135 and H145 are built, shaping the picture of air rescue, police and increasingly the Bundeswehr.

To identify reliably, you need only a few features: Fenestron or open tail rotor, skids or wheels, the tail section and the number of rotor blades. The registration does the rest. More practical tips for out in the field are in the article Helicopter spotting.