Furia, just one small correction: The FH1100 is a turbine-powered ship. Yes, we wished the government had provided such service but we knew they could not.
Guanaja has about 10,000 people, none of whom pay any income or property tax. But never mind tiny Guanaja. With no heavy industry, no tourism industry at all, and most of their citizens in poverty, Honduras as a nation will never have enough revenue for even the most basic civil or social services. If they won't even fund municipal EMS ground services in their cities, how could anyone even dream of something as "frivolous" as an air ambulance?
During my time in Honduras, I only ever saw the F-5's, that Israeli Industries Arava (or whatever it's called) and the 412 fly. And those aircraft only flew rarely, in conjunction with specific U.S. anti-drug operations, for which they were probably partially reimbursed. The Honduran government, existing for centuries on handouts from other governments (like the U.S.) devotes precious little of those monies to their air force. The local joke was that the drug dealers supplied the fuel to the air force so the pilots could maintain currency - with the proviso that the airplanes *not* be used in routine drug interdiction (which they were not). The only military aircraft I ever regularly saw in Honduras were from the U.S. (The others on your list are surely those that have been impounded or confiscated. I doubt very much if even a tiny percentage of them are airworthy.)
But you're correct in that even countries that can afford municipal EMS helicopters choose to not. Even if St. Maarten could afford to purchase a...oh...S-76, say, look at the cost of operating it. When you factor in all of the costs of a 24/7/365 aviation department, the numbers get so big that the government figures that money can be "better" spent on other things. And until we perfect a "Star Trek"-like transporter device, some people are going to die because they cannot get to a hospital fast enough.
The CIA website (
www.cia.gov) reports that the Netherlands Antilles are home to about 225,000 people. In 2004 the government there had expenditures of $950 million versus revenues of $758 million. (This includes $21 million in foreign aid.) Whoops! Small imbalance there. The Netherlands Antilles also had in 2004 a staggering $2.68
billion in foreign debt.
Do you see money for a public EMS helicopter there? No chance.
Hey, life is risky. Sometimes it's riskier in some places than others. The single-pilot, VFR-only R-44 simply should not have been tasked to do night "medevacs," period, end of story. Had it been a rich and famous American or European tourist onboard at the time of this accident, he'd probably be thinking right now, "Gee, I wish I hadn't decided to vacation in Saba. Not my wisest decision in retrospect." But that doesn't mean St. Maarten should immediately install an IFR EMS helicopter with a budget of three or four or five million dollars per year.
I mean, it's nice to dream, but it isn't going to happen.