SAR Cover Increasing? Safety over money for a change!
 

Hot on the heels of the Haddon-Cave report it appears that the decision to reduce the number of SAR bases to 24 has been cancelled, and in fact they will increase to 28 again. A long term plan or a panic response? Either way good news... :ok:

Ministry of Defence | Defence News | Defence Policy and Business | UK's Search and Rescue network to be maintained

I note the headline talks of 28 bases when the content talks of 28 crews

When would HRH qualify as a SAR pilot? (There's a job for one of the extra crews then).

What chance of the press getting it right when even our own MoD press office and Minister for the Armed Forces, Bill Rammell (where did he come from?) can't.

And what price the SAR-H contract?

I'm hoping like mad that CHC win the SAR H bid......Now that Air Rescue have withdrawn they should be in with a good chance

I believe tomorrow is B&FO day, so whoever is selected as Preferred Bidder, we should know pretty soon.

Nice piece of spin as it doesn't give all the implications!

As far as I'm aware from a SAR-Bouy mate, they are dropping the daily second crew, so if they need a another aircraft (ie Boscastle), they'll need to ring around they guys off shift to see if they can cobble together something. Obviously, they won't be able to guaruntee one within an hour, if one at all!!! :uhoh:

NVJ,

Your chum is right, for the time being, but this loss of 2nds is due to the reduction in numbers of crews and therefore will only last until crew numbers have increased again.

Your point about having to ring around to get a scratch crew is valid, but this is demonstrably a feasible way of generating a spare crew when needed: the Grayrigg train crash is just one example of people gladly rushing in to work at the drop of a hat, when they weren't on duty, to man a spare aircraft, and speaks volumes for the dedication and flexibility of the mil SAR crews. If you can find a scratch crew at 8.30pm on a Friday evening, you can get one any time!

Not so sure......

Buried on the 8.pm. news on Radio Scotland last night was the news that the SAR cover out of Leuchars/managed by Kinloss will be restricted to daylight hours until the end of November, at the earliest. According to the report, this is in order to ensure that adequate cover is provided during daylight hours.
Apparently, this has also been the case since mid October.

Seems crazy to me, as the time that I'd want most SAR assets available is during the dark when it's harder to search and/or rescue. Also seems to smack of this Government's news management to let something like this come out at this time.

From memory don't a large majority of the call outs come after Mrs smith notices that Mr Smith hasn't come down off the hill or back from fishing, normally at the end of the day?

Even when the extra crews do come on line will there be any serviceable cabs to fly in? In the mean time it still means having crews driving up and down the country and getting mucked about by parenting agreements that won't give an MT driver or car to try and help reduce the fatigue. :ugh:

Oh did someone mention SAR from Leuchars. Been a long time since I did shift there on good old Walter. Another one of the great SAR flights closed. But there again that is progress for you:cool::cool:

Heads down, look out for the flack

Not a very well written piece since it keeps mixing up the number of crews and the number of bases.

To clarify - the RAF have 6 SAR flights, the RN 2 and the MCA 4. This announcement only affects the RAF flights.

The RAF SARF cannot maintain 24/7 cover and man the Falklands with 24 crews which we all knew but some Air Ranks didn't believe and so, after trying to take us down to 24 from the 28 we had, we are being taken back up to 28 so the resources match the task (tricky concept that).

Because we were actually undermanned on rearcrew in the first place, reducing crews further has seen the need to bus winchmen and radops around the country to plug gaps in the shift plots of flights who lave lost crews to the Falklands.


The resulting fatigue levels have been assessed as a Flight safety hazard by the SARf Cdr so until the manning is back up to full strength, whichever flight loses a crew to the Falklands will go down to 12 hour shifts with the intention that no two adjacent flights eg Boulmer and Leconfield, are on 12 hours at the same time. A new crew goes every 3 weeks to the Falklands and the detachment is 6 weeks.

At the moment Lossiemouth and Wattisham are on 12 hour days because their crews are in the FI.

This 12 hour manning is temporary and nothing to do with the SARH planned reduction in SAR service post 2012 which will see Portland, Chivenor and Boulmer reduced to 12 hour cover PERMANENTLY in order to save the contractors money.

The concept of SARH was to provide no less capable a service which sits at odds with cutting 3 flights down to 12 hours I am sure someone somewhere is 'managing the risk' - well right up to the point where lives are lost because the cover wasn't there when it was needed.

One other point of fact - at Chivenor, a third of our rescues are at night and I suspect the same is true for most SAR flights. Who will pick up the slack or is it postcode lottery time for SAR now?

The standard answer is that faster helicopters allow medium risk areas to be reached within the hour which, on the face of it, seems obvious but that is only true if you count flying time. If you accept that RS45 means exactly that then your superfast new helicopter has only 15 mins flying time to make the medium risk area from the time of the CALLOUT, not the time of the takeoff.

This is where the 1 hour fudge is applied - the intent of the 1 hour to medium risk areas is time from callout but some have used time of takeoff instead to justify fewer bases and less cost. Unfortunately, if they want to go down that road you could cut the number of bases even further since with a 150 kt helo you only need 150nm between flights.

Fewer helicopters means less flexibility and almost no surge/concurrent ops capability - this is where the great PFI that is SARH is leading us and it stinks.

Crab

As the 'contractors' have to supply a service that fufils the ITT, surely it must be the IPT changing the goal posts based on what the govt is willing to pay for. :{


If 24 hr cover is wanted at all bases I am sure that service can be provided. :ok:

onevan - the bidders put pressure on the IPT to move the goal posts because they could not make any profit by meeting the actual ITT - the Bristows/Westlands group pulled out because they couldn't make a profit out of what was being asked for. Now the goalposts have been moved I would think they are V pi88ed off as trhey could possibly have stayed in the competition.

So instead of going back to the drawing board and having to issue a new ITT with a new budget, the original terms have been watered down to save money - the Falklands is not now included in the main bid and 3 flights are to go to 12 hour manning, not to give any increase in (or even match) current capability but simply to save cash.

Now we have 2 bidders left and a decision to be made by only a select few of the IPT (some of whom seem to have a distinct bias) - we will inevitably get the cheapest bidder:{

Someone brave should call a halt to this process before we condemn the British public to a profit-driven service that will not match what currently exists.

Why will it not meet what we currently have?

Are you sure? It's not what he told me, with the reason being rather sensitive!!

Because there will only be one aircraft at each base, and because 3 of those bases will only be manned for 12 hours a day. It also appears very likely that SAR-H will cost rather more than the existing set-up - though exact comparison is impossible as the SAR-H process has pointedly refused to evaluate the cost of what we currently have.

No, but my earlier post was to the best of my knowledge - apologies if it turns out that I'm wrong.

The loss of 2nds is permanent because we can't run 2nds and comply with the EU WTD.

The 12-hour cover for flights whilst they have a crew in the FI is temporary and will cease once manning levels are back (or up) to normal.

Vec - present requirement is to make all medium risk areas within 1 hour. Given RS 45 at night it would take 1hr 15 to get from Culdrose to Chivenor and 1 hr 37 to get from Valley to Chivenor at 150 kts. Given that a lot of our jobs are in S Wales (Brecons etc) that increases the time to get on scene from Culdrose and decreases it from Valley and comes nowhere near the 1 hour stated requirement.

All the bluff about fewer but faster helos giving equal coverage is guff because it only considers flying time not callout time.

Same capability my a&se:{

:confused: To comply with the EU WTD one needs 4 crews for 24/7 coverage, therefore one needs 8 crews to have permanent 2nd helio coverage. Or did you mean we cant afford it?

Your Maths isn't very good Shipmate..... If you need 4 crews to man 1 aircraft then you need 5 cxrews to man 2 aircraft.

If an RAF crew is a crew of 4 (2 Pilots, Crewman and winch Op) then by your reckoning you would need 32 people to man 2 aircraft? If 1 aircraft is the Duty and the other is the Standby that means you would have 4 people on Watch and 28 people Off watch...? That would never pass the Daily Mirror test.

I may be mistake but I think that Gannet SAR flight (The UK's busiest SAR Flight) have 2 Aircraft and 4 crews....sometimes 3 1/2 crews.