Valley SK enroute west of Eire
 

Currently airborne is a Sea King from Valley enroute to a vessel 220 miles west of Eire. It had to refuel on the west coast to carry on it's journey westwards (5.5hrs endurance and 2hrs ETA to vessel) to see if they can winch down and get the casualty off to Shannon. A Nimrod is on scene already and providing top cover.

My point is, the Irish Air Corps stood down their Air Rescue last year and the Irish coastguard now provides all air-sea rescues with S-61s.
They have one based at Sligo in NW Eire. Why has the RAF been tasked for this? has the S-61 insufficient range to carry out this rescue or are the Irish Coastguard helo's not properly equipped for night ops in rough weather?

It's a range issue
 

Hi Razor61,

The Irish Coastguard S-61 SAR helos radius of action is 200nm. Any shouts further than that are usually done by the UK Military SAR SeaKings as they have an hours extra fuel. This has been standard practice for awhile now. Or the Irish will wait and launch so as to meet the vessel when it comes into the magic 200nm range, but if it's an urgent case and can't wait, the Poms will do the job, as it looks like in this case.

Also that far out it could possibly be in the UK's SAR region anyway as their region curls around Ireland and out into the Atlantic.

I bet you a pint of Guinness it's a Spanish fisherman they're going out to!:cool:

You have to remember that sending a SK 220 miles west costs a small fortune. The UK MOD and Eire MOD have an MOU to share costs of airborne hours....

at the end of the day, UK MOD pays ....

Well don't keep us in suspense.....

Did it make it and was it one of my countrymen?!

Dung,

many thanks for that. Is the S-61 at Sligo the only one on the west coast?