Originally Posted by
jimf671
What were the regulatory requirements for this flight since it was not directly lifesaving flight but top cover? Would this affect the way such an approach was planned and executed? Crab has told us a bit about how a RAF SAR Force aircraft would have handled approach to Blacksod but this was a civilian aircraft and was this regarded as SAR flight?
I think this is a very good question and I was thinking along similar lines. All this talk of letting down using the SAR modes, radar to avoid obstacles, perhaps NVGs, is all very well when saving lives but when I was CTC on the L2 fleet I did detect an element whereby this mode of flying became normal to the crews. That sort of flying is significantly more dangerous than conventional public transport IFR flying. So if you are coming to grab me out of the sea/off a mountain, I'll be delighted that you are operating more dangerously than if I was on the way back from the 40s, but if this becomes routine and the distinction between real life saving flights and other stuff is blurred, the prolonged high risk ops is only going to end in tears. Of course I speak from the experience of the G-JSAR ditching with a bunch of unseated "passengers" in the back, flown home from a platform with no significant danger - just a power cut - as a SAR flight, when of course it was nothing of the sort. I'm not a SAR pilot but I wonder if it is an occupational hazard to lose the distinction in risk levels between a life saving SAR flight and more routine stuff such as providing top cover after a while.