Originally Posted by
Vie sans frontieres
Trouble is, there appears to be a bank of 4 seats and a bulkhead in the way. Blind faith will only get you so far. Sooner or later you have to confront the reality that it's too darn small and kit will have to be sacrificed and when that happens, the 'no lesser service' principle falls apart.
By the way, I should have said, all that kit needs to be stowed somewhere where it won't get wet when you bring a casualty on board during wet winching.
The reality is that the AW189 rear cabin is identical in volume to the Pavehawk (without the long range tanks that often sit in the back of the Pavehawk cabin). The differences are that the AW189 cabin has a bulkhead behind the pilots (Why?), is a little bit shorter and a little bit wider, and has a storage area with stretchers and med kit to the centre-rear of the main cabin.
There are four seats across the front and four across the rear. There are two rear-crew and the contracted "Standard MRT Load" is six MRT plus their rucksacks and a pile of other gear, even hot, high and fueled-up.
Of course, that is not an equivalent service. If it was an equivalent service then there would be about ten seats and you could only fill three of them when fueled-up at ISA and 3000'. And of course you would need fuel leaks, electrical fires, an HF aerial in the way of the door, rotor brake failures and a single winch as well.
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I have a few concerns about the new service but most of them do not centre on the aircraft specs.
- The customer (DfT/MCA) skill set is not appropriate for a 70+% Land SAR service.
- The award price is 20% less than the low end of the contract notice estimate in spite of the number of aircraft now being specified at over 50% more than that originally envisaged. And of course more than 20% less than an incumbent.
- Rear-crew remuneration is not sufficient to realise the stated aim of harvesting the skills of the practitioners in the current service.
- There are indications that rear-crew regulatory supervision is grossly inadequate.
- The MCA-enforced shutthef3ckup training and rules prevent contractor collaboration with SAR partners and incumbent providers to the extent that it has the potential to restrict the contractor's ability to provide an equivalent service from day one.
- At the time of contract award, the contractor was many months behind its competitor on aircraft procurement and still around four months behind later that year. If trailing on this vital issue, what else?
- SAR version AW189 ground clearance is a potential problem for mountain jobs.
- Clarity on the effect of the changes in performance requirements in CAP 999 Version 2 would be helpful.