Central Helicopter Services CHS

Central Helicopter Services CHS AG, known as CentralHeli, is a Swiss helicopter operator founded in 1997. The company is registered in Cham and flies from its base at Buttwil airfield on the border of the cantons of Aargau and Lucerne. It holds Swiss Federal Office of Civil Aviation (FOCA) air operator certificate CH.AOC.3009 and states that it is approved to EASA rules under FOCA supervision.

The company flies sightseeing flights over Lucerne, Lake Lucerne and the central Swiss Alps, along with taxi flights, load lifting, transport and assembly flights, and it trains new and experienced helicopter pilots. It mainly serves central Switzerland and the cantons of Aargau, Basel, Solothurn and Zurich. Licensed pilots can also hire its helicopters on private charter, and its team includes staff who lead a large animal rescue service.

Its history began with pilot training on the Enstrom 280 and sightseeing and taxi flights on a Bell 206B III JetRanger, which the company states is still in use. It added a Bell 407 in 2005, which allowed load lifting, mainly in the densely populated Swiss Plateau and its towns. The aircraft on the Swiss register under its certificate are that Bell 206 JetRanger and the Bell 407, and its school flies a Guimbal Cabri G2 with a glass cockpit. No third party safety audit is published for the company.