The American Helicopter Society (AHS) International, Inc. is the non-profit technical society for the advancement of vertical flight. It is the world’s only international technical society for engineers, scientists and others working on vertical flight technology. AHS International has 21 different technical committees and two dozen active chapters around the world. There are over 70 Corporate Members and 28 Educational Members.
Each year, the Society organizes or co-sponsors several regional and international conferences that facilitate the advancement of the theory and practices of helicopter and other VTOL aircraft technology, and publishes their proceedings. Its Annual Forum is the largest vertical flight technical conference in the world, with over 1200 attendees.
Formed in 1943, the Society publishes a general audience vertical flight technology magazine, Vertiflite, as well as the world’s only technical publication devoted solely to vertical flight, The Journal of the American Helicopter Society (JAHS), published quarterly. The society advocates on behalf of rotorcraft technology to the public and to government bodies. AHS also awards $50,000 or more in annual scholarships and sponsors an annual student design competition for university undergraduate and graduate student teams. In addition, AHS International presents two dozen annual awards to companies, individuals and pilots for technical accomplishments, supplier excellence, inspiring rescues, and promoting the goals of the Society.
The vision of AHS International, to quote from their website, is "To provide global leadership for scientific, technical, educational and legislative initiatives that advance the state-of-the-art of vertical flight."
Even though it has the word "American" in its name, the membership is international; the focus is also all vertical flight aircraft, including non-helicopter rotorcraft (such as the V-22 Osprey), jet-borne V/STOL (such as the AV-8 Harrier and F-35 Lightning II), and other non-conventional configurations.
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