Undoubtedly the scale of the wind element in offshore energy support is on the rise, mostly tackled as an offshoot from existing OES operators. Denmark’s KN Helicopters is different in choosing to focus entirely on the niche. Gideon Ewers went to the company’s headquarters in Esbjerg to find out more.
KN Helicopters is something of a paradox. On the one hand the company is very niche – operating four helicopters, they have confined themselves hitherto primarily to supporting Denmark’s offshore wind industry. In that sphere, though, they are dominant – with more than 80% of market share.
Good, you might say, they are a big fish in a small pond and not be far off. But the critical thing is that this pond – and not just in Denmark and the rest of Europe – is about to get very, very much larger.
The scale and size of wind farms 10 years hence will dwarf the present industry, with even conservative projections anticipating more than twentyfold growth.
What is more, those wind farms will not only cover a greater area and be further offshore, but also feature turbines on a scale that is frankly staggering.
To put that latter point in some sort of context, typical turbines to date have had an 80-metre blade diameter to generate around 2 MW of electricity. Newer turbines being built today use a 164-metre blade diameter to generate 8 MW, but the turbines now under development, which will produce in the order of 14 to 18 MW, will have a staggering 234-metre blade diameter, just shy of three times the size of the first-generation windmills.
Setting up shop
But before we gaze into the future, it’s as well to look at today’s operation and how it came about, as well as how this kind of operation works.
The genesis of KN Helicopters came when two pilots, Niels Peter Kjeldahl and Karin Granhøj, saw what they believed to be a gap in the market – an easy fix “one-stop shop” for wind farm developers and operators, for both farm construction and maintenance support.
“Before we started KN Helicopters, I worked as a HEMS pilot but also at Siemens in the offshore support back office,” says Kjeldahl.
“We had 70 of us on that team, but I was the only aviator. All the rest came from a marine background – they knew ships! I learned a lot about vessels, what they can and cannot do, what the costs of running a ship are, both as far as operating as well as environmentally. Where all the pluses and minuses are with aircraft versus support vessels.
“So when we came to start KN we had an idea how to sell air support to the customers because we understood what they need. You can’t just say to them that you’ll fly people to and from windmills or substations and hoist them up and down. They’ll just say ‘Yeah, we know that.’
“You have to know what the availability of generation is going to be increased by being able to say ‘We know the size of your turbine, the capacity of the turbine, what the penalty of a shutdown is going to be, and because this is the North Sea how many days you can’t get there with a support vessel.’”
Under the heading of “one-stop shop”, KN Helicopters basically provides a turnkey operation to its customers, supplying not only the obvious, the actual lift, but also emergency equipment.
It’s an oft forgotten point that offshore wind is not entirely about hoist operations. At the larger offshore substations and during construction, helidecks are also a factor.
“All of this has helped us to convince wind energy companies that it might be a good idea to utilise helicopters in a different way to those they’ve seen in the past,” says Kjeldahl.
“You can’t just say to them that you’ll fly people to and from windmills or substations and hoist them up and down. They’ll just say ‘Yeah, we know that.”
Niels Peter Kjeldahl, CEO, KN Helicopters
Selling points
Like most operations, it turns out that selling air support to wind farm operators is more complex than first glance may suggest.
Besides the obvious factors like the distance offshore of the farm, as well as it size, one element that needs to be considered, especially in the case of more recently built structures, are manufacturer warranties, since many construction contracts have a clause whereby the turbine builder compensates the operator for any loss due to outage during the warranty period.
“So even if you can give them less downtime and they have the opportunity to make money it doesn’t really matter to them because they are being compensated,” says Kjeldahl.
“So it’s really no use – you can sell all you want, they are not buying. But as soon as they are out of warranty you have a plus case of two or three million euros a year by introducing aircraft.”
Another factor that must be taken into consideration when pitching to an operator is the flexibility the site has to pick up load when an individual turbine fails.
“Some turbines have a ‘power boost’ capability, so if one or two turbines fail they can maintain production by turning up the capability on the remaining turbines say from 4 MW to 4.2 MW. There is a penalty in wear and potential for breakdowns and it’s time-limited, but it’s another example of why you have to understand what they have and what you are selling.”
Making savings
So what is the argument for using helicopters over surface vessels to support wind farms?
According to Kjeldahl, vertical lift scores on many facets. Firstly there is the question of dispatch reliability, as Kjeldahl explains.
“The bulk of our work is in the North Sea, so the sea state is a factor 50% of the time for support ships. Of course, we have weather limitations too – visibility cloud base and icing – but that only adds up to 10% of the time. In the case of a breakdown, we can launch within 30 minutes of a call and be on site 10 or 15 minutes later.”
Since that response time includes getting spares from stores at the harbour a 20-minute drive away, it’s easy to see how this could be reduced even further by storing spares at the airport or heliport base.
The transit by sea, even in conditions where the sea state is within limits, also places loads on the repair crews, since the transit is both longer and more physically demanding.
Then on arrival there are the materials handling questions. Since the majority of the time the work is carried out at the business end of the wind turbine, the nacelle at the top, equipment and spares have to be craned on to the turbine and then hoisted to the nacelle and vice versa. Several steps that are eliminated by the use of helicopters.
Another surprising advantage, and one that runs counter to the environmental lobby narrative, is that helicopters do rather better than surface vessels on environmental performance.
“To get to 25 or 30 knots the support boats have two 2,500 horsepower engines. Those things eat fuel – in a day they might use 2,500 to 3,000 litres of fuel, while we’d use 1,000 litres to do the same job. So it’s a really significant saving in CO2 emissions and if we use SAF it’s even more.”
Quantifying the savings, Kjeldahl says that when a helicopter is used for scheduled maintenance as well as emergency repair missions, the CO2 emissions compared with using surface vessels is in the order of a 60% to 80% reduction in emissions.
Above and right, this temporary base was built by KN Helicopters from the ground up and operated for 18 months at a considerable saving to the client. Images: KN Helicopters
Weighed in the balance
A common misconception is that a limiting factor for helicopters is the ability to carry spares in terms of weight compared with surface vessels – a notion dismissed by Kjeldahl.
“Actually, it is not really a problem,” he says.
“We rarely fly outbound legs empty. If we don’t have technicians on board, we will be bringing spares or other items to cache on the turbine. Also, in the case of planned maintenance, the entire service kit only weighs around 500 kilograms.”
Niels Peter Kjeldahl, CEO, KN Helicopters
Even so, while the argument is beginning to go the way of the helicopter, there remains a strong lobby from the shipping industry.
“We are seeing clients moving toward helicopters for everything, but the shipping side is a really, really strong industry that we have to contend with,” says Kjeldahl.
Back to base
Returning to the “one-stop shop” concept that Kjeldahl and Granhøj had in mind when they founded KN Helicopters, besides the direct support of wind farms the company also has an in-house maintenance capability with a Part 145 facility with authorisations on the EC120, H135 and H145.
It also boasts an in-house ATO approval, which allows it to provide type ratings on the EC120, H135, H145 and H175, as well as IR (H), IRI (H), FI (H) and TRI (H) ratings – although the company primarily uses the pilot ratings capability to train new hire and contract pilots rather than marketing it to third parties as a profit centre.
For customers, KN can provide Helicopter Hoist Operations for Passenger (HHOP), Helicopter Landing Officer (HLO), Helicopter External Load (HEL) as well as Compressed Air EBS training.
Perhaps, though, one of the rare if not unique services it can offer customers is a heliport/base building service.
“It is unusual,” agrees Kjeldahl. “If you approach nine out of 10 companies and say to them ‘Can you go build us a base?’ they’ll say ‘No, that’s not something we do.’
“We can and we have done it two times now – building a heliport and base where there is nothing, just a cornfield.
“The customer worked with us to get the local planning permission, though it helped because they were a government body!
“But we got the planning permission in January and we started operations in April, so that was everything – helipad, hangar, passenger check-in, crew accommodation, briefing room, weather station, fuel, everything. And then when the contract was complete 18 months later, we took it all away and reinstated it as before.”
When repair or maintenance is needed, most of the work takes place on the nacelle at the top of the turbine. Helicopters can bypass the craning and hoisting and stages entailed by the use of surface vessels. Image: RotorHub International
What is perhaps more remarkable is that carrying out the design, construction and disposal of the base was still more cost-effective than using an existing airport 10 minutes’ flying time further away from the wind farm site.
“Actually, we costed it based on eight months of operation, and it was cheaper in the end – the project took 18 months, so it was an even better deal for the customer.”
Kjeldahl goes on to explain that first of all the cost of an additional 20 minutes of flying from the local airfield alone covered the cost of the base.
“The next point is that everyone working on the project was a highly paid consultant charging by the hour, so add 30 to 35 minutes to check in versus at the dedicated base walk in the door and be in the air 10 minutes later. So then that paid for the base a second time
“And finally, we did not have to pay airport landing or handling fees, so it paid for itself a third time over – it was a no-brainer for the customer.”
As a matter of fact, Kjeldahl says the hardest part of the contract was not the work associated with the base set-up and removal, but rather keeping up with the pace of flying.
“It was the sheer amount of flying we had to do – I think it was more than 7,500 passengers. With an H135 we were flying every day from 07:00 five hours a day, so 18 months with no back-up helicopter in reserve. That was the most challenging part.”
KN Helicopters functions as a one-stop shop, supplying emergency equipment as well as vertical lift. Image: Avincis/ Ned Dawson
Striking a balance
Since things are going so well and the company is dominant in the Danish market, why the decision to seek a relationship with a company like Avincis, which completed its purchase of KN Helicopters in September?
Kjeldahl is succinct, saying: “We are a small company without the leverage or economies of scale we need to build up for the expansion that is coming in the offshore wind market. Of course, right now we compete hard with other operators on every contract that comes up, but when you look at what’s coming we are not in position grow rapidly enough.”
Hence the decision to seek a buyout through M&A specialists, which resulted in the completion with Avincis.
So then what is the motivation for Avincis? Luckily, the day I was in Esbjerg, Simon Tye, the Avincis Group’s Chief Commercial Officer, was also in town and able to provide an overview from the parent company’s perspective.
He said: “If you look at the number of operational wind farms in northwest Europe today and then compare that with what is approved but not yet built, there’s at least a doubling – and then you factor in the areas that are not yet approved but are almost sure to be, then the picture looks like a market 20 times what it is today. If we can win 20% of that business, that’s significant.”
Tye went on to explain that it’s not just about the swathes of development planned for the North Sea, Baltic and Gulf of Bothnia, but also the proposals for a dramatic expansion in the Adriatic as well as the deep-water parts of the Mediterranean.
This map of Denmark shows KN Helicopters’ bases and operating sites following its acquisition by Avincis. Offshore wind farm arrays are also marked. Image: KN Helicopters
“Obviously we already have a significant footprint in the Italian and Spanish markets, but Niels Peter and the team have the wind operations knowledge and experience and that is what we are looking to leverage.”
Tye outlined the planned expansion in other parts of the world, notably Taiwan, South America and the United States – the latter despite some of the current rhetoric.
He said: “We want to find a way to work where we can leverage what’s been achieved here and grow it without losing what made it successful in the first place. Maintaining customer support, which means not overcommitting and then not being able to deliver in the market we find ourselves in today, with a tight labour and aircraft availability and the rest. It’s going to be a fine balance all the way.”
So what does that look like for KN Helicopters, which despite the acquisition will continue to operate under the name for the time being at least?
In the coming year, the EC120 will be retired, with at least two H145s and possibly a third joining the fleet. What’s the expectation for business growth for the unit?
Kjeldahl and Tye are in accord when they say: “At least double today’s by the end of 2030.”
This article “When the wind blows” was published in the December 2025/January 2026 issue of RotorHub International. To read more articles like this, apply for your complimentary subscription today.
