Trust
With the newspaper text now appearing in Lancashire including little gems like "The decision to close the Lancashire’s police helicopter base was made based on flawed information" and "The report also confirmed campaigners’ claims that models used justify the decision to close the Warton air base earlier this year were inadequate."
NPAS is now faced with a perception that it lied through its teeth to close Warton and therefore it stands to reason that it also lied to close down such as Wattisham [before the fixed wing aircraft were ready to replace them].
Probably less of a case with Teesside as it is in a fairly crowded area as far as bases are concerned but that yawning capability gap between Husbands Bosworth and the East Coast, London and Newcastle is all but indefensible.
Asuming the P68s ever turn up.... there will be issues with how to get AvGas and there will be a training period involved. So when they do turn up there will be six months in which the logistics of where they can uplift AvGas at night and what they need to put in place to make that work. That is exactly the sort summer weather operations they could have undertaken in the last few months in a non-capable VFR P68 [or a BN2 for that matter] on lease. But what do they seem to have done?
I guess there will be options to put in place temporary AvGas bowsers at existing bases including Exeter and Hurn assuming that the ILS will work for them out of hours. North Weald has already been mooted as a fixed wing base but it has no landing aids regardless of time of day. The number of diversion airfields must be severely limited and that [May 2017] mooted "6 hour endurance" is clearly pie in the sky where IFR flight is concerned.
Last edited by PANews; 6th Dec 2017 at 10:57.
Reason: Added text.