Happy New Year to the SAR community
Fot those who follow ths thread but are not from an SAR background: MIRG stands for Maritime Incident Response Group and is a UK offshore firefighting capability, primarily designed to be delivered by SAR helicopter.
Does anyone have the factual reason for the MIRGs no longer wishing to use the 139? Just interested as I know that they were considered in the procurement process and that they saw the layouts of the aircraft interior at a meeting in North Denes before the aircraft came into service. They were informed at that time that, if required, their deployment from the South Coast would be via two AW139 lifts.
My personal opinion is that I have never been a great fan of their capability. They must be very well funded if they can 'stand up' fifteen offshore firefighting teams, each with a cadre of fifty trained firefighters and pay the MOD and MCA for an allocation of training hours. All of this for a capability that in its three years of existance has been to (I believe) three offshore fires. I think that UK plc might have been better served to have that money spent in other more 'acute' areas of the emergency services.