This thread has prompted my first post.
Regarding SAR I have never once had the CAA question the judgement of the crew in carrying out any tasking.
These are non-normal usually one off events that must call on the judgement of the rescue services at that time.
What the regulators are concerned about is the regular and planned use of landing sites, which do not offer a certain level of safety to third parties, casualties and crew (in that order).
I fully support this concern.
Hospital landing site usage has or will increase for the following reasons:
1) The are more helicopters
2) Medical staff are covering themselves
3) Shortage of Ambulances so Helos used instead
4) NHS stretched so patients being moved long distances to where there is a free cot/bed etc
Very recently our SAR unit has had various secondary tasks which involved patient transfer many hundreds of miles.
None of our team mind going out on a limb to recover a person or many persons in distress.
To then have to regularly “wing it” in and out of very small-unlit hospital landing site I consider questionable.
I fully agree with the regulators trying to improve margins of safety for hospital landing sites even if its only for the sake of the children sleeping in the house I’m having to narrowly avoid.
Can I respectfully point out to a previous poster that Civilian /Coastguard SAR is not constrained by any limits on operations other than the self imposed trade off between seriousness of situation/risk to third parties/aircrew/aircraft.
This applies to weather, performance or otherwise.