Pretty harsh. The boys and girls at the ARCC are a professional bunch that, on the whole, do a very good job with limited resources and sometimes under significant pressure. Forgetting to organise a HLS or booking an ambulance is certainly not a daily occurrence. Ambulances are not always available to meet crews due to operational priorities elsewhere or simply, due to the nature of SAR, not enough notice being given. Nobody is perfect and of course mistakes are occasionally made (like anywhere) but to accuse the ARCC of making "massive cock ups" and "daily failings" is doing them a disservice. This is a unit that is proud of the support it gives to UK SAR and has just had it's notice of termination. Show a bit of respect.
What I was trying to highlight with my post is that although the RAF and other people may be annoyed that it is moving to the MCA, however it is wrong to start casting aspersions on if/how and how well or not the MCA will conduct ARCC ops.
There have been a few comments about training, do people know that ARCC management and controllers will be going to the MCA to deliver a bespoke ARCC course? DO they know that during the transition arrangement current ARCC controllers will be running ops from the NMOC at Fareham?
Furthermore, the ambulance situation may have been a bad example but all this talk of the MCA crashing and burning when it comes to ARCC ops, in turn what I was looking to highlight is that there is current failings and as we have agreed – everyone makes mistakes, yet it is ok for is to gloss over it when its RAF ARCC and accept that mistakes have been and are being made however when it comes to MCA ARCC we are going all guns blazing and shooting them down before they have started!?
I accept the unit is proud to have served UKSAR however shouldn’t we sit back and wait to see how the MCA fair, before writing them off before they begin?