Didn't winchop cover this already?
Sort of. This is what he said.
The good news is that the CAA have indeed allocated an individual to oversee Rear Crew standards.
The bad news is he is also the CAA Chief Cabin Crew Safety Inspector. His background is as a flight attendant with no Rear Crew helicopter experience.
When I quizzed him on this, he indicated that the CAA do not deem Rear Crew Standardisation and oversight important enough to warrant it being a fulltime position allocated to an individual experienced in the role.
The kindest thing that can be said about what is reported above is that the CAA's understanding of what is required of SAR rearcrew is totally inadequate. Those updated training requirements shown in the revised CAP 999 may have changed, but I don't know if the Chief Cabin Crew Safety Inspector is still their top man to oversee SAR.
My question though was regarding the qualification of trainers on SAR flights. If pilots have to prove their ability to train and check others to the CAA, why not rearcrew? It makes no sense when rearcrew are so deeply involved in the safety and success of an operation. And if Bristow are, as appears to be the case, converting ambulance paramedics with minimal flying time into front line winchmen, then it is absofunkinglutely essential that the people that are responsible for training them have been recognised by some sort of authority as sufficiently capable instructors with a broad enough range of SAR experience to be both credible and authoritative. That's what is expected of pilot instructors. Why not rearcrew? This is serious stuff.