HH,
If you don't have a crash in your car for 10 years do you cancel your insurance policy?
We have committed ourselves in international agreements to provide SAR provision out to 30W. We need either to honour that agreement, or give it up. Our government is the first to criticise other nations who fail to live up to their agreed obligations, indeed we seem to have a habit of invading some who don't!
As to your question, I don't know exactly, and don't really care. I suggest you put in a FOI request if you are really interested. However, a brief look at the 8 month period Aug 99 to Mar 00 (I got bored at that point) shows:
28 Aug 99 incident at 4811N 02758W
8 further incidents west of 015W
Other operators have already shared their personal experiences.
With the large growth in sales of SAR beacons in recent years, and planned changes to satellite reaction times, I can see the number of beacon hits well offshore increasing in the years to come. How do you investigate or respond to these, especially if they are unregistered (private yachting individual) so there are no contact details, or if you can't establish comms by radio? The nearest surface traffic, if you can determine exactly where it all is, could be well over 12 hours away, an aircraft could potentially be on scene within 4-5 hours worse case. Each incident can only be treated as a real one until proven otherwise.