I'm a gambling man so I'm going to put fwd MY suggestion as to what'll happen and see how close my "guess" got to the real McCoy when the results are advertised.
Remember it's MY idea and not anyone elses that I'm related to at the mo':
CHC, or First Investment Bank (whoever owns them now) win the contract. S92's go to the bigger sites doing long range SAR and 139's go to the sites doing close in work, like south coast etc. No mixing of a/c at sites, no double quals. One of the existing mil airbases becomes a centre of excellence for ALL UK SAR training utilising S92 and AW139's. There will be groundschool for joint ops (Mil/civvy/police/MCA etc) command and control exercises. CRM courses. Paramedic training for winchmen/divers, dunker trng et al.
There will also be a simulator for the S92 (other than the one at Farnboro). Possibly (50/50) another sim [AW139] to absorb extraneous work from rotorsim in Milan who are fully booked and the only other 139 sim in western europe (I believe).
The 139 will replace the Griffin in SARTU in due course and prepare the ground for basic flying trng SAR, UK.
The 2 x RAF SAR-H crews and the 1 x RN SAR-H crew, will live alongside the rest of the civvy SAR-H crews for "x" period before jumping ship and becoming civvies on twice their salary, leaving the mil unable to support SAR-H front line. This will signal the end of mil involvement SAR Uk ops forever.
CHC will make millions during the 25yr contract and a consolidated industry will prevail offering multi agency co-operation on a scale previously unheard of.
I lied about the last sentence
Last edited by Thomas coupling; 28th Feb 2008 at 16:27.