Settle meow, it was just a suggestion :-)

I call bull**** on the 25 per day SAR cancellation failures.

Even five a day brings in the “cry wolf” problem.

How do they know after six weeks of false alarms that the current one is real and someone is lying out in the freezing rain in their aircraft wreck.

That’s the serious problem I reckon.

I expect the cost overall to be lees than revenue lost from persons falsely using Dick's registration/s so as to not receive charges for certain services - this to the point Dick probably gets waivered charges due to his costs involved in the past that proved it was not him/his aircraft.

Maybe they have used your call signs too Mr Rod.

If you forget that your car park ticket expires - and someone checks, is it free?

I think the fact that AMSA etc are resorting to the likes of OZRunways tracking when aircraft disappear is a sign that things could be done better. This is just a part of it. Pilots aren't logging SAR times for whatever reason and the authorities and resorting to using third-party providers to locate aircraft.

Why would there be a "cry wolf" scenario?

As with beacon activations, each SARTIME expiry would be treated individually and appropriate action taken in a timely manner.

Ask them:

https://www.amsa.gov.au/safety-navig...escue/aviation

Probably because they treat them all as real?

For example the amount of times I've been sent out homing beacons that have ended up being in a tip somewhere, or wandering around the field with the antenna only to find an accidental epirb trigger, far outweigh the number of "actual" callouts I've been on where people have been floating in the water or stuck in the bush.
So in my experience they don't exactly treat their SAR obligations lightly.

So the financial waste must be staggering

Was the previous registered owner of the dumped ELT chased up and charged the cost of the search?

As has been said previously, just set an alarm on your phone for 10 minutes or so prior to SAR expiry. Simple and effective.
I have forgotten to cancel SAR a few times in the past and have had a call from the SAR centre asking politely whether I was safe. These gracious people always accept my groveling apology and even refrain from laughing.
I find it a bit hard to accept that 25 SAR cancellations are missed per day.

Bit hard when they weren't registered.
But since the change (uh oh there's that dirty word again!) to 406, which I am quite the fan of, there's been a lot less tip searching, effectively zero for me.

As for a waste? The false alarms yes, but you get idiots in all walks of life setting off false alarms (Emerg. Services calls etc) which you cannot stop.
But when it's real it's worth it. I bet if you or your family were the ones in need you'd be glad people went out looking. How can you determine its real or not without checking, have you got a better system for that Dick?
Bit hard to say "no, it costs too much it might be a waste" when you've got the family of the missing pleading you to help find their loved ones.

I wonder what the cost would be to have an automated system that sends an SMS to the registered phone number five minutes before SAR expires. Same for beacon activations; just a message saying "the ELT in your plane/boat has been activated, can you please check and call us on xx-xxxx-xxxx if it's a false alarm?"

It seems like that would solve 99% of the accidental false alarms, leaving more time to concentrate on either true alarms or deliberate false alarms (can't do much about the latter).

SAR is a responsibility of the Govt. They don't charge for it and I doubt they could due to their international obligation to provide SAR. I also doubt that 5 missed SARTIMES per day (the ones passed to JRCC) result in SAR action. In fact the only time I've heard of SAR action being taken for a missed SARTIME was for a genuine missing aircraft.

Another beatup.

Maybe, bend. I might have a few enemies who knows.

Point I was trying to get at here was that system has flaws. If we went to a "fine the forgotten sar pilot" then it's still open to the same sort of incorrect billing issues regardless of who administers it.
Now imagine if people were, under the fine system, getting sar under their false callsigns (unlikely but not impossible). Then they went missing. Completely wrong information being used to try and locate them.

With registered 406 beacons AMSA will call the registered owner. If no answer they will call the listed emergency contacts, which is typically family or friends, and ascertain some information from them if possible. Not only that but they have the home address and can get police around to the property to knock on the door or see if the boat is in the driveway or plane is in the hangar.
Registered beacons with contact info like this has already cut down on the number of "false" searches occurring.

Re SARTIMES...

Many 'Moons' ago, there was actually a proposal from management in CB, to introduce a 'pricing regime to discourage participation'....
(e.g. Charge $10 per SARTIME..???)

Can't remember exactly 'when', but was about the time of the cessation of FS to VFR aircraft- possibly not long after 12/12/91.

Fortunately, it was 'dropped'.

In Perth FSC, which covered the whole of WA, we usually had on average, one maybe every couple of months or so where someone would forget to cancel SARTIME....a simple phone call usually resolved the problem.

How come 9,000 per annum now?? Is this the 'x' or 'y' generation..??

No Cheeerrrsss....

I call bull**** on the whole thread. If these cancellation failures really exist, what is the cost when the staff who follow them up, staff from ASA to the cops, are already at work. If the failures cease to exist will people loose their jobs? It is funny how you are all attributing "cost" to folk already gainfully employed.

Look at something else Dick. We need your talents for useful stuff.

Dead right, just what I have been saying.

And looking at the actual page, of the 9000, 1800 were referred to the RCC which obviously shows the other 7200 were just the machine going Bing. 1800/year is just under 5 per day or around 1 per shift for the RCC. One. Hardly a job creator.

Introduce fees and/or fines for sartimes = less users of the system = less staff required.Which is probably what Dick is aiming for in the first place and also why ASA empire builders never went with it when suggested.
That said sartimes are yesterday's technology born out of necessity before full radio coverage,transponders and epirbs. Just how many backups do you need? In any event if you put in a 3hour sartime and ditch half hour into the flight you will be waiting 2.5hrs before they even start enquiring. Useless to you if bobbing around in the sea.

Oh, where's that?Common Sense says you wouldn't put in a 3 hour SARTIME for an overwater flight, and instead operate on skeds per AIP -