I am sure that the boys and girls at Boulmer feel equally annoyed at this ill-thought out concept of ops. They are a busy flight and if you take them out of the equation at night there is a huge gap up the East coast between Leconfield and Lossiemouth - maybe the Minister is expecting Bond to plug this gap!!!
Out of our 205 jobs so far this year, 45 have been at night after 2100 and would not, under the proposed regime have been conducted unless an aircraft from Culdrose or Valley were diverted into our patch.
It is like suggesting that having fewer but faster ambulances will improve the NHS stats and service - neatly forgetting that once your asset is tasked, you have no back-up or overlap for hundreds of miles.
Much statistical analysis has been done of SAROPs and interpreted in different ways; when you see a cluster of jobs near to SAR Flts you can either conclude that having the flt there tends to generate jobs because people are more likely to call it out (the erroneous but fashionable version if you are a bean-counter) or that in fact, the SAR flts are in the right place to meet the needs of the British public, whether at work (fishermen etc) or at leisure (walking,climbing,sailing,fishing,swimming etc etc).
The job rate does go down at night, you don't have to be Hercules Poirot to see that, but to naively believe that you wont get more than 1 night job at a time is delusional.
How on earth the Minister can state that the new service will meet and exceed current levels of provision is utterly laughable with these proposed cuts in availability/manning.
Calli - it is what will happen to any two RAF flts at a time when those flights lose a crew to the Falklands. This is due to the MoD downsizing us from 5 crews to 4 but keeping our level of committment the same and not one of us is happy with it.
Airborne Artist - no is the short answer, you would have one aircraft from Culdrose and the next available one would be from Valley or Lee - and that still only makes 3 total even if you assume there are no other searches, rescues, medtransfers, bendydivers etc etc happening anywhere else in the UK.