Roberto Garavaglia

Italy

 

From: Leadership Profile, Vertiflite July/August 2025

Roberto Garavaglia, Senior Vice President, Leonardo Helicopters

Based in Cascina Costa, Italy, near Milan, Leonardo Helicopters Senior Vice President of Strategy and Rotorcraft Business Evolution Roberto Garavaglia watches the global vertical flight industry. He observed, “After 30 years on the job, you develop a certain sense of authoritative data and reliable sources of information.” Garavaglia’s team of 15 to 20 managers and analysts is devoted to strategic planning, product policy, business development and competitive market analysis. “We do not generate information. We transform information into something useful for the business. We do not design helicopters, but we try to share with our colleagues in engineering where we would like to be with the next product.”

Leonardo’s current products range from the 3-t (6,600-lb) class AW09 to the 15.6-t (34,400-lb) AW101 helicopters. The 8-t (18,000-lb) AW609 tiltrotor awaits Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) approval, which will be “soon,” Garavaglia said. “After years of development, we hope to see it flying as a true product for the market next year.” Garavaglia acknowledged, “It will be a niche product, but it’s a niche with multiple applications. The tiltrotor allows you to combine the flexibility of the helicopter — you can take off and land anywhere — with the flexibility in distance you have with fixed-wing aircraft. These two kinds of flexibility are what we’re going to explore for the future with the ‘609.”

NATO’s Next Generation Rotorcraft Capability (NGRC) concept studies now pit future tiltrotors against compound and conventional helicopters. Garavaglia observed, “Among all the fast rotorcraft, the tiltrotor is the one prevailing at this time — it has been selected by the US Army in fierce competition with other architectures.” He added, “We are very busy promoting the concept for utilization by European armed forces because of the need in Europe to project forces with vertical flight and longer range across the Mediterranean, the North Sea, the geography that we have. We do remain open to exploring other solutions too, but tiltrotors are definitely gaining momentum due to their unique competitive features.”

Today, Leonardo Helicopters serves military and commercial operators in more than 100 countries. Garavaglia noted, “Sometimes in America you have designs created around the mission. In the rest of the world, you create missions around existing designs. I think the important thing on the military side is the growing relevance of what we call dual-use or commercial-derivative helicopters used for the military.”

The dual-use formula won US Department of Defense (DoD) orders for the US Air Force’s Boeing MH-139 Grey Wolf utility helicopter — leveraging the Leonardo AW139 — and the AW119/TH-73 Thrasher trainer for the US Navy. Garavaglia offered, “The majority of armed forces use specialized aircraft which are built for the military mission or purpose, as in the case of the Apache, Chinook and Black Hawk. Commercial airframes tend to be less expensive and more reliable because commercial operators want reliability and low operating cost as key characteristics. Then you add military systems, so you’re only paying the difference. Also, a commercial off-the-shelf aircraft can be made available in shorter times.” The Leonardo executive added, “There is a lot of internal activity in deciding the future of our military presence, both in traditional rotorcraft — dual-use like the AW169 commercial derivative and specialized like the AW249 and NH90 evolutions.”

Garavaglia acknowledged commercial helicopter sales have recovered from 2020 pandemic lows. “The commercial market is growing overall, but it is a comparatively stable market. There are certain roles that are more established in some areas than others. If you look at air ambulance, it’s typically Europe, North America, Canada, Australia, Japan, New Zealand, South Africa. What is omni-present is the executive market. Corporations tend to use helicopters, especially in America because of the distances. There is an increasing tendency to do so in Europe.”

Green mandates that made major oil companies hesitant to invest in new exploration have crested. Garavaglia said, “It’s a very complex, evolving situation, but I see a little more propensity in starting explorations in the offshore oil and gas industry. Offshore wells tend to deplete quickly, so exploration needs to continue. We also have the recent addition of windmill farms where the helicopter plays an important role in the maintenance of those installations.”

Leonardo continues to partner with Airbus on upgrades for the NH90 military transport helicopter. Garavaglia said, “Cooperation is necessary. It’s an enabler for markets. It brings complications to some extent, so you have to really well-manage your role as a partner. A lot of cooperative programs tend to create duplication. The NH90 has a number of production lines, depending on the country and the jobs. That is inevitable. A big nation [the US] can afford to have three original equipment manufacturers for one DoD. In Europe, we are obliged to have many countries for very few manufacturers. The political implications don’t change.”

Science and Art
Roberto Garavaglia was born in Milan and found an early calling in aviation. “My high school studies were more classical. While I studied physics, I also studied Greek and Latin. Then I moved to engineering. I would have liked to be a pilot, but my spectacles betray some near-sightedness. Aviation was my number-one choice since I was maybe five or six years old. Thank goodness I’ve been able to do what I like, which I think is a blessing.”

Garavaglia’s grandfathers were civil and industrial engineers, but the flight-minded student found his aerospace education near home. “I had very good studies at the Polytechnic [University] of Milan,” he said. A year in the Italian Air Force taught practical lessons. “I was in airbase defense at [an Italian Air Force Panavia] Tornado base. It was very useful, because as an engineer, I had never managed people. Ground defense is about managing soldiers. It was at a major base in Italy, and managing a few hundred people with very different backgrounds taught you how to lead people, how to be sometimes a little direct about the way you think things should be done.”

Aerospace engineering called Garavaglia to regional turboprop maker ATR in France. “When I worked in Toulouse, it was like being an artist in Florence in the 15th century. You may not be Leonardo or Michelangelo, but you got to see them work. It was very exciting to spend eight years in Toulouse with Airbus, my fixed-wing time of life.”

Garavaglia ultimately led marketing in the ATR 42/72 program. “I was in sales engineering, so I knew the aircraft inside-out. I toured the world and made calculations about performance. I remember the calculations for Continental Express to fly over the Rocky Mountains.” ATR, Avro and Jetstream studied a 70-passenger AirJet in 1996–1997. “For some reason, it didn’t go well, but I ran all the panels. There were many interesting lessons about the market and the interactions with big airlines.”

His fixed-wing experience set Garavaglia on a path to rotorcraft. “There was an exam in my Polytechnic curriculum which was about vertical flight, but I didn’t intend to go that route. When ATR decided not to go with the AirJet, I decided it would be good to take an opportunity with a company that was expanding. Agusta [subsequently AgustaWestland and now Leonardo Helicopters] was very much in an expanding mode in the late ‘90s. It was also an opportunity to be back in Italy, in my hometown.”

Garavaglia started in Agusta helicopter sales. He reports today to Leonardo Helicopters managing director Gian Piero Cutillo and was heavily involved in development of the AW249 attack helicopter and acquisition of the Kopter SH09 (now AW09) light single-engine helicopter. “We keep our projects ahead of the competition,” he said. “Our success with the AW139 and AW169 is because we put a lot of focus on the overall safety of the design, compliance with the latest safety regulations and more-than-adequate installed power in the helicopters. We believe that power is performance and safety. It gives you the edge when you want it.”

Garavaglia also sees advantages and challenges in rotorcraft automation. “Understanding where the distinction between human-machine interface and pure information stops is the delicate part we have to look at. We want to promote safety and not promote complacency in the cockpit. Fixed-wing aircraft all tend to fly alike — takeoff, cruise, descent and landing on runways which, with exceptions, are all the same. In helicopters, all flights are different from each other. You have to manage the cooperation between the aircraft and the crew in a very wise way to make sure safety is increasing all the time.” He added, “My dream would be to have a system that would predict LTE — loss of tail rotor effectiveness — and take you out of trouble.”

Rotorcraft automation poses military opportunities. “We need to understand what role we can play in the unmanned systems. The big trendsetter in the west is still America. It was interesting to see the culling of FARA [the US Army Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft] and the transformation of FARA into multiple unmanned systems. It remains to be seen how that role of armed reconnaissance is going to evolve, whether in rotorcraft or small fixed-wing assets. We need to understand what our role in that area could be, knowing that autonomy and automation are absolutely fundamental enablers.”

Heavily dependent on automation, electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft have yet to make their business case at Leonardo. Garavaglia offered, “We are looking at the technology, but we are not yet designing a product. A product is something you want to design for a special purpose and eventually build in series so you can try to make money. We know we need to study electricity. We need to study propulsion. We need to study automation. Batteries provide a fundamental limitation. All the eVTOL designs today have very limited range and endurance because of the battery limitations. If you add the combustion engine to do a hybrid, you don’t solve the emissions problem.

“The business model for a long-range airliner that flies 4,000 to 5,000 hours a year is easy — two long-haul flights a day. If your eVTOL business model depends on very many flights during the day, you must be sure you have passengers flying every time the aircraft is available. If you use something that’s only 30% reliable, they’ll use a taxi or some other form of ground transportation.”

Roberto Garavaglia chaired the VFS Board of Directors between 2018 and 2019, and observed, “VFS does a great service to the community of vertical flight. It is doing a great job bringing together worldwide this pretty tiny community.”