Originally Posted by
PANews
It is fair to say that those people with knowledge of police helicopter flights over central London ‘a few years ago’ were horrified at the low numbers.
NPAS London struggled to get anything over the Jubilee celebrations, just one 145 out of four it now has allocated. The real reason may well be mechanical and management related.
I seem to remember that, prior to NPAS, Lippetts Hill managed to average some 9FH per day with three EC145s. Most of the time, one engineer was available or on call. To get all three up for a weekend event, such as Notting Hill, would mean some 6 weeks of preparations to clear close to 50FH of flying time for each, and then there was defect control and finally recovery from that tasking. Not easy with limited staff.