However, since both sides of the mil/civ SAR fly a similar number of hours (training and ops), the new contract will still nearly halve the amount of training hours.
Flounder flew 190 hours of training last year - under the new contract, that would be a third of the total for the whole flight. Assume that 2 pilots get the full training together and there are 5 crews - at Flounder's present rate that is 950 training hours for a year - SARH is mandated to provide 600.
So what training is going to be cut? Both the mil and existing civsar seem to agree on what amount of training is required to do the job - how have the MCA and DfT been able to cut a huge swathe through that with no actual knowledge of the task?
I fear that Jim is right and tasks like lifeboat and MRT exercises and any other sort of valuable liaison flying will just disappear. But even if you get rid of those tasks, 600 hours is simply not enough to maintain competence - it might give a technical currency but that is not the same and it will come back and bite someone in the arse.