Bertie - my point entirely ref the winching - who will pay for the extra flying? I am sure all the AA donors would far rather have AA at night instead. However I don't suppose the punters actually have any say how the AA is used because they just see the stats on numbers of callouts. People won't stop donating just because the air ambulance is used like a land ambulance or they would have done so already.
Is it better that a SAR aircraft and crew are tied up for several hours carrying out the transfer instead? Not when there are enough people criticising SAR for not being available enough already.
The fundamental peroblem I suppose is that the NHS should fund the AAs just as it should fund medevacs (other than giving money to MoD to spend on new HQs)but this is very unlikely to happen.
Minself - SARH may well turn out to be all military pilots in civilian aircraft so don't presume that it will all be civvy. 99% of medevacs are vital to the patient and therefore rewarding to do but probably 10% are challenging and require SAR aircraft and crews.
With the NHS going more towards centres of excellence, more people will have to travel for specialist care and therfore more critically ill patients will require air transport - is a civilian SAR organisation tasked with coastal rescues going to pick up that workload?
Oldbeefer - just when I thought we had got away from the name-calling....