No matter which way you look at it, operating helicopters is an expensive business! A single base SAR operation will likely have multiple aircraft – each one costing several millions to purchase, insure, base (hangar) and role equip.
That’s before you fly even a single hour! You then have crew, support and management salaries to pay for and of course, every flying hour then attracts additional variable costs. One of the biggest variable costs is fuel. An average medium size SAR helicopter such as the AW139 uses around 150 gallons of fuel per hour. With the cost of fuel at around $3 per gallon (Europe), that equates to around $450 per hour in fuel costs alone. Larger aircraft such as the H225 and S92 use around 215 gallons per hour, so their costs amount to around $650 per hour in fuel costs.
In the year ending March 2017, UK SARH units flew 5,048 operational hours. If we use a conservative 200 gal/hr fuel burn for their S92’s, it’s reasonable to suggest that UK SARH spent around $3.03million on fuel alone in 2017. This is where we can apply some perspective!
A Multi Person Helicopter Rescue system* can be purchased for under $100,000. A 2-week training course for pilots, crewman and ground crew can be delivered for a similar amount. The Multi Person Helicopter Rescue system has an operational lifespan of 10 years (or 10,000 cycles) and so its purchase cost over that period can be amortised to less than $10,000 per year – or just 16 hours of fuel for a H225! If you could increase your Multi Person Helicopter Rescue capacity and efficiency by a factor of fifteen, for the equivalent cost of less than half of one month’s single aircraft fuel cost, would you?
