UK Search and Rescue
It is stated in a 2008 report by the Maritime and Coastal Agency ("Search and Rescue Framework for the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland") that:
"The UK organisation for civil maritime and civil aviation search and rescue is derived from the UK Government's adherence to the Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), the Convention on Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) (1974), the Maritime Search and Rescue Convention (1979) and the Convention on International Civil Aviation (Chicago 1944) (Annex 12)."
The Maritime Search and Rescue Convention (1979) allowed the definition of Search and Rescue regions for each country which was a party to the agreement. It states:
"Each search and rescue region shall be established by agreement among Parties concerned. The Secretary-General shall be notified of such agreement."
and
"On receiving information that a person is in distress at sea in an area within which a Party provides for the overall co-ordination of search and rescue operations, the responsible authorities of that Party shall take urgent steps to provide the most appropriate assistance available."
The Search and Rescue Region for which the UK is responsible for "
overall co-ordination of search and rescue operations" is shown in the following picture...
...The UK Search and Rescue region covers some 1.25 million square nautical miles of sea and over 10.5 thousand nautical miles of coastline. Nowhere does any of the above references say you
have to conduct SAR from the air. Have a look at the following that shows the rest of the world and who was designated lead coordinators for each area from the 1979 SAR Convention:
I doubt that all of the nations have full airborne SAR capabilities for all of the agreed SAR regions!!! Indeed, we already hand-off SAR to the Irish, Icelanders, French, Dutch, Danish, Swedish and Norwegians within our agreed SAR region.
Anyway, back to my point, if the Channel Islands can do this, and we are falling short within mainland UK, then why can't we do this in a similar manner to the RNLI?
LJ