As a charity reliant on cash flow, the piles of cash you refer to are cash reserves and are there in the event of a problem with the helicopter requiring an immediate cash solution. These cash reserves prevent the air ambulance being taken off-line due to the unforseen and whilst to the ill informed these funds might seem to be better spent else where, the benefit of this is out weighed by the necessity of maintaining a contingency fund. I'm sure the generous folks who have donated these funds would prefer this rather than seeing a break in a vital service due to lack of financial planning. The millions we are talking about are spread over a couple of dozen charities.
I’ve also attended many incidents where we have arrived, packaged the patient and left the scene only to hear that a Seaking is inbound to the same incident after it is all over.
I have also experienced this, but I have also saved a precious SAR asset being dispatched because an air ambulance was able to deal with an incident and also recognised early on during an incident (on arrival at scene) the limitations of the air ambulance and tasked SAR. It depends on availability, the location of the incident the proximity of the nearest asset and of course the weather and daylight. SAR and air ambulances work perfectly well alongside each other (when the SK's VHF works and you don't have to relay messages through D & D), and when the several different control rooms speak to each other.
MS