I completely agree with Huntnhound! However I take exception to the comment from heli-cal, given that the unit concerned is based at an International Airport one might have assumed a degree of security was implicite.
Mal, to my mind you are only sort of right here. Yes, Heli-Cal's comment wasn't very helpful, but he makes a valid point. As a pilot I would expect a major intl airport like BHX to be secure, and take your point it is almost implicit. But you have to ask yourself which police force the airport resides in? WMP.
Who are ultimately responsible for the prevention of crime and disorder in the area covering BHX? WMP. The fact that it is an airport does not absolve them from their responsibility to prevent crime and disorder, if anything they should be more proactive around airfields, especially big ones.
In many ways this would be much more forgivable if it were a smaller airfield in a smaller police force... Coventry for instance, which is in Warwickshire (the smallest police force in the country outside City of London). But WMP is the 3rd biggest force (only the Met and PSNI are bigger), policing our country's second city and responsible for a major intl airport - in fact on most recent figures BHX was the 2nd biggest airport outside London.
People just expect better, and their "playing the victim" in it is ever so slightly galling. Of course, nobody expects any police force to be able to prevent or detect all crimes, that's just not reasonable; but if they can't look after their own helicopter it really doesn't bode well for the rest of us does it? At best its embarrassing, at worst its incompetent. I think it is probably somewhere between the two!
In todays atmosphere of cost cutting and budget restrictions it is difficult to justify almost any extra expenditure on Air Support.
You're right, ultimately cost cutting and budget restrictions will have played a factor in this. The problem is that I don't think anyone is advocating spending more money on the actual ASU (they do a great job), people are understandably concerned that someone was able to break into a large airport and torch ~US$5m worth of aircraft - in front of the very people we pay a lot of money to in order to protect us. I normally hate the "terrorism card" being played - but if it is this easy, could they have put something on the ATR72 pictured next to G-WMAO? Or one of Ryanair's 738's?
To suggest that the West Midlands Police were incabable of protecting their own aircraft whilst it was parked at Birmingham International Airport shows a distinct lack of knowledge and understanding of Air Support and that heli-cal's comment was a worthless "cheap-shot".
Really disagree. They were incapable of protecting there own aircraft, that much is fact, it was in their charge and it got set fire to. I don't think that is a cheap shot at all. Now to what extent they mistakenly placed too much trust in BHX security is another issue... however, they can't say they weren't warned about the quality of that either (see
here).
Now, my little rant about WMP over - this is an absolute tragedy for us as pilots; and I'm sure that other ASU's will review their security in light of it. I shall miss seeing G-WMAO over work (I work very near BHX); and I hope that Sid & Co find a new ride soon!
As a question, was it commercially insured or crown indemnity does anyone know?