Originally Posted by
PANews
Cabby,
Getting an answer on costs is probably a forlorn expectation.
For recent figures there is no point approaching Police Scotland for instance.... their December 2020 FOI reply to another declared it was a commercial secret, which is understandable as they lease from Babcock and there will be many rival bidders interested in the numbers. Oddly though that same FOI reply declared that the helicopter flew only 132 hours and 50 minutes from 01 January 2020 until 01 November 2020. Numbers that suggest they do not even need a helicopter!
Another reply emanating from Wales quoted £17,000 per flying hour which will make most of us wince.... and the same article stated that sort of number was rubbish. But is it?
It depends on how long your piece of string is. By the time you add the cost of the crew [usually left out of the answer because those numbers are eye watering], the new £2.5M hangar, ground rent, rates and the like the cost of the airframe seems like small change.
Estimates suggest that a new role equipped police helicopter will be about £7.5M, and the difference between two such airframes can be £1M based only on the sensor chosen so that is a pretty woolly estimate. That's if you buy it. If you lease it the first costs goes away but the yearly cost of the airframe the police operator can never own is boosted accordingly. Your 15 year old EC135 is worth virtually nothing but you probably do not see it for a month every 4 months while the maintenance organisation attempts to stop it falling apart. Chugging around in a private EC135 and doing 50 hours a year is a league away from expecting that same helicopter to dash here and there and circle a point on the ground for 1,000 hours a year.
20 years ago you may have been able to put a ball park figure of £1M on each airframe operated and a nominal cross charging rate of £1,000 an hour but even then there were arguments over whether the hourly figure to be charged was £1,000 or should have been £3,000.
Like the operator you will need to decide what is 'cost' before you can possibly answer half the question. The true cost could easily be that £17,000 an hour.
Thanks PAN,
The figures are much higher than I expected.
I noticed another post a while ago which showed the payments made to NPAS by the different forces, and some were up to the £5k per hour figure.