AS332 Super Puma
ICAO AS32The French medium helicopter family, flown as the Super Puma, Cougar and Caracal. Live AS332 positions.
Flying right now
Live · 30s
No AS332 Super Puma is transmitting ADS-B at the moment.
Military aircraft are not obliged to broadcast, so this happens regularly. The count refreshes every thirty seconds.
Airframe
- Manufacturer
- Airbus Helicopters
- Role
- Medium transport and combat search and rescue
- Class
- H2T — Helicopter, 2 turboshaft engines
- Crew
- 2 to 3
- First flight
- 13 September 1978
- In service
- 1981
Operators airborne
Nothing of this type is up right now.
About the AS332 Super Puma
This designator covers a family that has been renamed several times. The AS332 Super Puma is the original; the military AS532 Cougar and the current H225M Caracal are developments of it, and air forces across Europe, Africa, South America and Asia fly some version.
The Caracal in particular has become France's combat search and rescue helicopter, and it is used for the kind of long-range special forces insertion that needs an in-flight refuelling probe on a helicopter.
Traffic here is diverse and thin: a Bulgarian Cougar, an Albanian one, a French Caracal, a Swiss Super Puma. No single operator dominates the way the Coast Guard dominates the Dolphin page.
Callsign prefixes
- CTM
- Cotam — French Air and Space Force
- RESCUE
- Search and rescue tasking
How to recognise it
- —A large four- or five-blade medium helicopter with sponsons housing retractable main wheels.
- —A long nose sloping down to the windscreen, and an upswept tailboom.
- —Military Caracals carry a refuelling probe projecting well forward of the nose.
Common questions
+ What is the difference between the Super Puma, Cougar and Caracal?
They are successive developments of one family. AS332 Super Puma is the civil and early military version, AS532 Cougar the militarised one, and H225M Caracal the current combat search and rescue model. All share the AS32 designator here.
+ Can a helicopter refuel in flight?
Some can. The Caracal carries a probe and takes fuel from a C-130 or A400M flying slowly with a hose trailed from the wing, which extends its range enormously for special operations work.
+ Who operates the type?
France, Switzerland, Brazil, Bulgaria, Albania, Singapore, Indonesia and many others. The operator panel on this page is built from whatever is airborne at the moment you load it.