78 came over in Managed Transition but there were already many ex-mil working for BHL and CHC. Of the 78, I think about half were rear-crew but I don't have exact numbers for the split.
The training plan as I understand it was that training on S-92A took place in Stornoway and training on the AW189 at Inverness. Those bases would have the spare/training 11th aircraft of each type for that purpose and those bases would provide the opportunities for suitably challenging training on wets and mountains.
Although the Stornoway thing happened, the rest was undermined by the whole AW189 carry on that took over 4 years to sort but the Inverness thing never happened and training was mainly at Lee-on-Solent. By the time the AW189 situation was resolving itself, adverts were appearing for people to train as rearcrew. Then in early 2021, Edition 3 of CAP 999 appeared with a major addition to Chapter 4 for the training standards for rearcrew (Technical Crew Members, TCM) and an operator-based accreditation procedure, stopping short of licensing.
The Stornoway S-92A spare/training aircraft now belongs to CHC at Tromso and the AW189 spare/training aircraft, plus one other, is now on the Kustwacht NL contract. Not sure where that leaves the training capacity. Synthetics only take you so far.
With the musical chairs that have taken place within the BHL SAR management recently, one might easily become concerned that this part of the big picture could become overlooked. Go on, surprise us Bristow!