Life in the old girl yet? (S61 merged threads)

[S61-S92]

From 1971, The contract with BEAH (or BAH from 1974 onwards) required at least one of the company's fleet of S61N's to be on standby for rescue duty at one hour's notice. A small team of six former Navy and RAF winch crewmen was formed and detachable Lucas Aerospace compressed air winches were purchased which could be fitted to any available S61N in as little as ten minutes.

During the six years of this contract, more than 100 operational sorties were flown and 190 people 'uplifted'.

To summarise, Hompy, there was no single SAR aircraft, just the availability of any of the BEAH/BAH North Sea S61 fleet in Aberdeen and later in Sumburgh from where the 'Elinor Viking' rescue was launched.

As nessboy points out, the first dedicated S61N civilian service was that provided by Bristow in December 1983 with a slightly altered G-BBVA followed by the fully SAR modified G-BDOC (See the Sumburgh thread).