Helicopter Search & Rescue

Bristow Helicopters have been involved in providing full-time Search and Rescue (SAR) services for over 35 years and have held all of the UK Coastguard SAR contracts for 23 years. We currently provide the UK government with seven SAR equipped Sikorsky S-61 aircraft, the majority of which have full auto-hover, dual hoists and Forward-Looking Infra-Red sensors. Additionally, we operate an advanced SAR equipped 332L2 helicopter for SAR out of our base in Den Helder, Holland.

We have provided SAR services in all of our operating countries and regularly supply a dedicated SAR helicopter and crew to cover exploration projects in remote areas.

In the UK alone, we completed our 10,000th SAR mission late in 2005 and have flown in excess of 15,000 SAR hours rescuing nearly 7,000 people.

We train (via FB Heliservices, our joint venture company) all of the military SAR pilots and crewmen in the UK and look forward, during 2006, to extend this training expertise world-wide in all aspects of SAR operations.

Bristow and SAR have been inextricably linked for three decades and have won the prestigious Queen’s Award for Innovation for our technical developments in SAR.

Bristow and SAR are synonymous; we have more SAR operating experience than any other operator in the commercial sector. Search and Rescue IS our business.