Three times in the last year I've received police tasking to search for a missing person where I believed that, due to more appropriate equipment (NVG) and a far greater endurance, a SAR helo would have been a better asset for the task than our MD902. On two of these three occasions I accepted the tasking but persuaded the command & control centre to ring the ARCC to request a SAR cab as well. On the third occasion, with the search area in hilly terrain on a very dark night at the limits of our useful range, we suggested that the ARCC be called but, if a SAR cab was not available, then we would launch and do what we could. We weren't called back for whatever reason, the SAR cab wasn't requested and the misper was found dead nearby the next day.
On the most recent of these tasks a Sea King was only offered once we had completed our search - in an adjacent force area, a long way from base, and therefore potentially extending the search period quite significantly. I don't know why; I am quite able to arrange in-flight deconfliction between search assets, thanks. Police C&C staff are often nearly overwhelmed with other tasking and simply do not understand aviation, it's not their role in life; those who are experts have to spell out what is available and offer what they can. On that occasion I rang the SAR Flt directly to give them a 'heads-up' and found out they were about to fly a 2 hr training sortie, so there was no practical reason why the tasking should not have been accepted. (As it happened the misper was found safe & well soon afterwards by ground searchers.)
It's frustrating to know what is available (and to have to explain the 'for free' concept each time), knowing that the ARCC is likely to decline without explanation! Please, ARCC folks, give more feedback to the police staff if you decline their requests, otherwise they simply won't bother asking next time...!
E99