A Year in the Life of Search and Rescue
Where helicopter crews rescue people in trouble around Britain
Introduction
There are 10 civilian search and rescue helicopter stations around Britain.
Crews are on standby 24 hours a day all year round to assist people in difficulty on land and sea.
Calls come into a central control room based in Fareham, Hampshire. These are then assigned to a particular base, which could be from Sumburgh in Shetland to Newquay in Cornwall. The teams then respond.
2020 in search and rescue
Helicopter crews had 2,229 jobs in 2020 - an average of one every four hours or so somewhere around Britain. This wasn’t much less busy than 2019, when 2,365 jobs came through.
While you can’t see the impact of Covid too clearly in the overall figures, the pandemic makes itself obvious when you look by month.
During the first full month of lockdown in April 2020 crews responded to just 64 calls, down from 233 in April the previous year.
However, the usual summer peak in August was more pronounced in 2020. Was this due to more people holidaying in Britain because of travel restrictions?
By base
Prestwick, near Glasgow was the busiest station of the ten, with 344 missions. The stations in the Scottish Islands - Sumburgh and Stornoway - were the least busy.
Sumburgh had 120 jobs in 2020, or about one every three days.
2020 day by day
This animated GIF I made below shows a cumulative map of all search and rescue tasks around Britain day by day throughout 2020.
Each point marks the latitude and longitude given in the data for the job, colour coded to the base. As you would expect, in general calls are handled by a base close by to maximise the chances of a successful mission.
Helicopters can be called out anywhere along the British and Northern Irish coastline. Jobs further out to sea are rarer but still a frequent part of the job. On land, there are clusters around Britain’s mountainous areas that are popular with walkers such as western Scotland, Snowdonia and the Lake District.
If the GIF doesn’t display in your email, view this in your browser or click the button below (go to the bottom for the conclusion).
Conclusion
The vast majority of these missions were rescue, search or support missions.
This map is a visual reminder of the thankless task these crews perform all day, every day, to rescue people in distress in hazardous conditions.