Guernsey's air search aircraft back in action

The Lions’ Pride – a Britten-Norman BN-2 Islander – returned to service on Tuesday after repairs were completed following a collision with a stationary plane at Jersey Airport in December.

Channel Islands Air Search chairman Colin Ferbrache said the repairs were carried out at the manufacturer’s base at Lee-on-Solent and were followed up with modifications to the on-board equipment ahead of a return. These alterations have enabled the Lions’ Pride to switch to the American N-Reg, which it is hoped will reduce future engineering support costs.

‘Unfortunately, the crew can’t just jump in the aircraft and take off,’ Mr Ferbrache said. ‘All the equipment had to be validated and all of the manuals had to be rewritten. We also faced delays when the delivery of spare parts were held up by Covid travel restrictions.’

CIAS is a charity which operates the aircraft with an all-volunteer crew. The Islander was purchased in 2019 for £1.5m, with another £1m being spent on new equipment, following a long-running fundraising campaign. It replaced a previous aircraft which was destroyed after being forced to land in fields on Jersey’s north coast in November 2013, as a result of a fuelling error.

The five-month hiatus has not been the charity’s only interruption to service since the pandemic began, with previous periods of unavailability being lengthened by Covid rules.

‘During the lockdown restrictions, we were not allowed to go out with a full crew. We were only allowed three on board, rather than five, and we were not permitted to go on training flights,’ said Mr Ferbrache, who is also a former crew member.

Asked how many shouts had been missed as a result of the aircraft’s absence, neither CIAS nor Guernsey Coastguard were able to give a definitive answer.

‘It all goes through the Joint Emergency Services Control Centre,’ Mr Ferbrache said, ‘which has a coastguard representative who will determine whether to call on the services of the lifeboat, the inshore rescue, the air search plane, or indeed to direct any nearby fishing boats to help out.

'There isn’t a specific set of criteria that would trigger our being called. In fact, there have been times when we have said to JESCC “you should have called us out for that” or “you should have called us earlier”.’

JESCC is also able to call on the help of alternative aircraft. A spokesman for Guernsey Coastguard said that between January 2019 and the beginning of this month, HM Coastguard aircraft, French Navy aircraft and the Brecqhou helicopter were called upon to assist on 31 occasions.

Mr Ferbrache said it was important to have the Lions’ Pride back in service.

‘It has saved lives,’ he said.

‘We can save the lifeboat a lot of time. Without our help, it could take hours rather than minutes to find people in distress. And it’s the best possible aircraft we could have. It has a good payload and it’s good in bad weather, so we’re content with the asset we’ve got.’