I don't know :)
I know only the italian SAR have a response team (from phone call to take-off) in 120 minutes. So now I'm curios about other countries (prefer european)

P.S.: italian SAR is only HH-3F Pelican, AB-212 and (from this year) HH-139 only. Not Long Range SAR and, I suppose, I'm not sure this is the correct topic

How long is Germany's costline?
How far into the Atlantic does Germany's Area of Responsibility reach?

Don't know but this shows a global view; not sure how current it is.

http://www.oceansatlas.com/unatlas/i...sar/SARMAP.PDF

1. No flight plan or request for help.

Kennedy never received a weather briefing or filed a flight plan. Except for the take-off portion of his flight, Kennedy did not contact any air traffic controllers; during the flight, he never requested help or declared an emergency. Under the conditions of his flight, Kennedy was not required to file a flight plan, and although he did not, no one knew his exact route or expected time of his arrival.


2. Wrong frequencies.

When the NTSB examined the wreckage, they discovered that both of Kennedy's radios had incorrect frequencies selected (he had selected 127.25 for Martha Vineyard's AITS instead of 126.25; likewise, he selected 135.25 for Essex County ATIS, but it should have been 135.5). The NTSB did not comment on the contribution this factor had in the crash, if any.


3. No one realized there had been a crash, as no one saw the crash and the radar that recorded the erratic last moments of the flight (~9:30 PM) was not "live monitored". Thus it was not realized there was a missing aircraft until a Kennedy family member reported the plane missing to the Coast Guard at about 2:15 a.m.. After standard checks to see whether Kennedy had landed at another airport (and thus more delay), the Air Force and the Coast Guard launched an intensive search at 7:30 a.m., fanning out 16 planes, four helicopters and several cutters along Kennedy's entire flight path.

Initially, there were reports that an underwater beacon was beeping off the coast of Long Island, and search teams began trying to sweep about 1,000 square miles of ocean. But the agencies focused their search to the north after a preliminary FAA analysis found that the plane disappeared from radar 17 miles southwest of the Vineyard.




So basically, after the FAA & Coast Guard were notified the plane was overdue, they still had to be sure it hadn't simply landed elsewhere and no one had called to say that, before they could declare it missing and begin a search.




The 30 minute response time is for "you need to get to this location, right away" calls... not for "he is late and we don't know where he is" calls.

@Neptunus:

Tell you what: Flying out into the NW, that large area between the AORs of UK, NED and DEN, what we call the "ducks beak", civilisation is far away, except for the odd oil rig.

And even one hour worth of flying time is too far for me to swim, maybe different for you though.
It´d be nice to have someone to at least have an eye on you in case I do down.

GK, interesting and true. The old rules used to be ETA +2 hrs before overdue action was taken for a piston and on ETA for a jet. Starting overdue action of course is just that; it is not launching SAR.

Overdue action, as you say "After standard checks to see whether Kennedy had landed at another airport " is exactly that, standard checks. There is no time limit for promoting negative standard checks into launching SAR though I would expect it to be quite short although middle of the night rousing staff at closed airport would take time.

Basic 3 phases of an emergency:

Uncertainty
Alert
Distress

As an example, para 3 of the following document sets some specific limits for moving from one phase to another if a flight plan has been filed:

http://legacy.icao.int/SARafrica/doc..._Manual_en.pdf



Whether there are some internationally agreed limits or not I don't know. I expect IAMSAR would be the place to look.

Cool Portuguese EH-101 "Merlin" SAR video:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?v...type=2&theater

Cheers,