Air Corps Availability

roadmaster wrote: »

Going by the defence forces facebook page they must be getting a handle on the pilot shortages by the amount of helicopters deployed firefighting. Even a casa has being deployed

The AC are still facing significant shortages in specialist areas of technicians, pilots and ATC. None of which can be trained over night. They are, at best, treading water.

What you see now is likely an "all hands on deck" approach. These fires have gained far too much publicity for the AC to shy away from.

I'm not saying they would but in typical military fashion, the "get the job done" mentality will persevere to the temporary detriment of other responsiblities. You can be sure if they are burning serious hours on the 139 fleet that this will have an effect down the road particularly as the heavier inspections have been outsourced recently, which highlights the glaring problem of technicians.

In any case, I suspect it is challenging and rewarding flying. Credit to the coilte heli crews aswell putting in serious work.

roadmaster wrote: »

Has the Government secretly bought extra helicopters and crew!

Task prioritisation at work.

roadmaster wrote: »

Under the sla with the hse does 112 have to have a back up helicopter in case the one that is on call has technical issues?

The SLA requires one aircraft available at daylight hours, 365 days a year.

As such, if the duty aircraft is grounded, it has to be replaced with another. It is implied that a back up aircraft is available.

faoiarvok wrote: »

Nothing to do with ATC. AC112 operates a daylight service, likely because it's not considered safe to land at unsurveyed accident sites without good visibility.

Air Corps often provided air ambulance transfers between airports at night.

I think you need to read back and look at the context to which I was discussing at the time.

The AC has well publicised ATC issues and is not H24 at present. This issue is the predominant reason why they do not offer a 24 hour inter hospital service at the moment which is nothing to do with the EAS discussion unless of course you think you can launch an international IFR flight from an aerodrome with no ATC service during the night.

AC112 operates under VFR rules and as such, is not required to speak to ATC whatsoever unless they enter controlled airspace.

You're confusing yourself. Misinterpreting the context to a post from over three months ago is hardly helpful to discussion.

I've highlighted the important past tense statement in your post also.

So just to clarify things.

The AC currently operate a daylight only Emergency Aeromedical VFR service from Athlone in support of the HSE and have done for six years now. This is a mandated service with an agreed SLA.

The AC previously provided a 24 hour inter hospital transfer/organ retrieval service to the UK which was also an SLA with the HSE. This is no longer the case due to a lack of personnel, most notably, ATC. They still routinely carry out patient transfers during the current working ATC hours.

roadmaster wrote: »

When you look over the last few weeks with all the operations the air corps are preforming between the security for British friends last week down south , 112 which seams to be in the air from dawn till dusk everyday and now firefighting north and south its a credit the men and women in casement that they can provide these services considering there is only 8 helicopters . A time s going to come soon when something major is going wrong weather its a major accident ,natural disaster or terrorist related and they ring casement for helicopter support but the caller is told sorry dont have the aircraft and we dont have the crews due to your penny pinching!

Like everything else in the Irish political sphere. If there are no perceived votes attached, it won't get attention and where there is no votes, there is no money.

The penny pinching will come home to roost and the chronic HR and retention issues that have plagued the entire Defence Forces will come home to roost eventually. It might not be a natural disaster, it will be an aircraft accident or a fatality overseas or on exercise and when it does happen the blame game will break out and in a weeks time it'll be old news and nobody will care.

How much have you seen in the papers recently about the smear tests. Undoubtedly one of the biggest medical scandals in the history of the state. People will die because of it and no one will be held accountable.

Defence doesn't stand a chance. Particularly because it's run by risk averse, micro managing and self serving civil servants.

sparky42 wrote: »

And nothing changes, just reading a book on the AC planning and development pre WW2/WW2 and it's virtually no different, no coherent planning, no political support, the Department of Finance denying everything...

As you say someday something really bad will happen, we've already had an example with the loss of Rescue 116 with the Casa's not available and ATC restrictions and yet nothing happened.

No different than Mowags in the Golan Heights without any armour upgrades, or the Navy with a ship they can't crew...

You are 100% correct. Old habits die hard.

Be under no illusion. Having a HR crisis suits the Dept. They can say "look, we are still doing all the same jobs (pretty much) so let's continue to downsize, make waves so bad that people won't stay so won't draw a pension".

There is zero ambition in the Dept of Defence. Absolutely none. The figures speak for themselves.

This country spent just 0.3% of GDP on defence, which was just half of what was spent by Malta. That Mediterranean island has one-tenth of the population of Ireland.

Tiny Liechtenstein, with a population of 37,666, managed to spend 0.4% of its GDP on defence.

https://www.irishexaminer.com/ireland/irelands-defence-spending-is-lowest-in-europe-at-03-of-gdp-471594.html

What is incredible is you will still have some who say even that is too much. Worth remembering also that the defence budget is split into two votes with pay and pensions accounting for roughly 70% of the total budget. That leaves approximately €200m to equip, maintain, train, deploy and organization of approximately 9,000 along with all the vehicles, aircraft, vessels and installations around the country.

sparky42 wrote: »

When you consider that just 20 years ago we spent 1.2% with an economy and population that was much smaller without any massive strain on the economy the idea that we can't afford more is utter Bull****, as said it comes back to there's no public will to actually have the DF funded more.


If/when there's a major incident the DF will be blamed, the institutional issues ignored and most likely something else privatised.

The issue now as I see it is the rise of social media and the likes of boards etc.

Every idiot, and I include idiot politicians in that as well has a platform to be heard now and any increase in Defence will be shouted down in favour of hospital beds, homelessness or housing.

Every decision is a trial by media.

roadmaster wrote: »

The greeks are asking Europe for as many helicopters as possible to help them out. If the government decided to sent two aw139s and crews to help , would the air corps be in a position to do so or would they be leaving things to short at home

The aer corps where fighting forest fires in Armagh a few weeks ago.

The Air Corps used to have retired pilots on what was called the First Line Reserve, whereby pilots who were gone to the airlines would come back for the equivalent of a summer camp and do two weeks of flying. All done away with in cutbacks in the 80s.