RAF Sea King crews from Valley will operate only during daylight until the end of the year
Search and rescue helicopters from a busy RAF base will only operate during the daytime for more than six weeks.
Crews from RAF Valley’s C Flight of 22 Squadron will fly missions for only 12 hours a day from 15 November. The base, on Anglesey, provides cover with its Sea King aircraft for nearby Snowdonia and mountain rescues further afield on the western side of Britain.
Only this week, Ogwen Valley Mountain Rescue Organisation praised one of its pilots’ ‘superb flying’ in appalling weather as a stricken climber and his rescuer were winched from a crag in Cwm Idwal.
The crews of the RAF and Royal Navy Sea King helicopters provide airborne backup for both the RAF mountain rescue teams and the many volunteer civilian MRTs that operate throughout Britain.
Five search and rescue bases have now been switched to daytime only operations. The Ministry of Defence says this is to provide adequate cover, safeguard their crews’ safety and welfare and to ensure there is continuous night cover.
It says it intends to restore the number of SAR crews back to 28, after cutting them back to 26. In the meantime, the temporary night-flying suspensions will be covered by other bases. An earlier decision to reduce the number of crews to 24 has been reversed, the MoD said, on the grounds that this would present an ‘unmanageable risk’.
Mountain Rescue patron Prince William will bolster helicopter crews if he passes his training
The goal is to have the number of search and rescue crews back to full strength by early summer next year. Prince William, Mountain Rescue England and Wales’s patron, is currently training to be a rescue-helicopter pilot. He recently accompanied volunteer MRT members on a walk to the top of Helvellyn during a visit.
Other bases affected by the daytime-only ruling are: Wattisham until 15 November; RAF Lossiemouth until 29 November; Leconfield from 29 November until 10 January next year, and RMB Chivenor from 31 December to 7 February 2010.
A spokesperson for the MoD said: “It has already been necessary in the past to close bases on an ad-hoc basis in order to address occasional shortfalls in manning arising from, for example, injury, sickness and ongoing support to operations.
“These planned closures will be managed in the same way, under the control of the Aeronautical Rescue Co-ordination Centre [in Kinloss], to ensure that arrangements are in place for full cover of the UK at night-time.
“There will be no impact on day-time search-and-rescue cover, and it is during this period that the overwhelming majority of call-outs take place.”
Armed forces minister Bill Rammell, said: “I am pleased to be able to confirm that we are restoring the number of search and rescue crews to 28.
“We aim for this to be completed by early summer 2010. In the meantime, we need to implement some temporary measures, but I have every confidence that these can be managed in a way which will not affect the service we provide.
“It is standard practice that, when a search-and-rescue station is not operating, which can happen for various reasons, the adjacent stations are able to respond. This process does, and will continue to, ensure that search-and-rescue cover is maintained throughout the UK 24 hours a day.
“I appreciate these changes have caused some concern but our search-and-rescue helicopter crews do a fantastic job and that will not change because of these temporary closures.
“Our crews provide a first-class service better than or comparable with anyone in the world, and that will continue.”
Airborne search-and-rescue services in the UK are split between the RAF, operating from Chivenor, Wattisham, Valley, Boulmer, Leconfield and Lossiemouth; the Royal Navy with bases at Prestwick and Culdrose; and the Maritime and Coastguard Agency which operates helicopters out of Stornoway, Sumburgh, Portland and Lee-on-Solent.
