The Minister of Internal Affairs, Eduardo Cabrita, has scrapped the helicopter contract with Everjets and is to contract three Kamovs directly as the current ones are inoperable.Everjets has been in charge of three Russian Kamov helicopters that were meant to be used for firefighting. None of these are airworthy. The remaining three, purchased from the Russians, are unavailble for use and were not included in the Everjets contract.
The company has been fined €5 million for breach of contract and the Minister of Internal Affairs will open a ‘direct adjustment’ procedure next week to hire another three Kamov helicopters, from somewhere, to make sure he can keep promises made on air support numbers for fire patrol this summer.
Due to poor forward planning, there will be no time to issue an international tender for the deal as this would delay the replacement of the three helicopters needed to be in place before this summer’s fire season.
Everjets' Russian engineers have been tinkering away with the three potentially airworthy helicopters from the beginning of the year. The National Civil Aviation Authority refused to grant an airworthiness certificate for one of the Kamovs, stating that OEM parts had been used for repairs.
In March, the National Civil Protection Authority shut down the maintenance hangars in Ponte de Sor, Portalegre, justifying its decision on the fact that a subcontractor, Heliavionics, had been involved yet was not an authorised company.
On 13 February, the Ministry of Home Affairs said it hoped the three Kamovs would be operational in time to join the forest firefighting fleet this year.
Having overseen the closure of the maintenance hangar, Eduardo Cabrita said, a month later, "this year we will have the best air defence for the country because we will have something that has never been achieved – a helicopter and aeroplane response available to the country all year round."
Everjets has only ever has three of the six Kamovs to repair and maintain. Two of the remaining three were in such a bad state of repair on arrival that they have been quietly forgotten. The third one crashed in 2012 and was written off.
In a rare example of the State getting a conmmercial contract right, Everjets argues that although it was operating with only three Kamovs, it was obliged to fulfill a contract with the same number of flight hours and the same operational availability as if it had six aircraft.
The Ministry of Internal Affairs is negotiating with other suppliers to guarantee the rental of more than 20 helicopters, to ensure that Portugal airborne fire fighting service is fully operational “in May” – the clock is ticking.
The cost of the Kamov debacle over the past decade is now close to €350 million, according to Visao. The purchase costs of the clapped-out Russian helicopters was €42 million and three of them, that perhaps could have been repaired to fly once more, most recently were under a 4 year €46 million Everjets maintenance contract - which now has been scrapped.
This is not the government's finest hour but at least a decision has been made to ditich the deeply useless Everjets contract and hire some equipment for the summer season.
