• Range of air sea rescue / medevac helicopters

    From NY@21:1/5 to All on Sat Jan 7 22:12:46 2017
    What is normally the maximum range of a medevac helicopter?

    I ask because I'm on a cruise liner that was about 600 miles off the
    west coast of Portugal last night when a passenger had to be evacuated
    because of a medical emergency. The captain turned due east, towards
    land, and opened the throttle wide for 6 hours. The closest point that
    we came to land was about 400 miles, before turning back onto the
    original course once the passenger had been retrieved by (presumably) helicopter and winchman in the small hours of this morning. A fixed-wing
    plane was also used in the rescue, though only to provide comms between
    ship, helicopter and Portuguese shore.

    The captain did comment in this morning's briefing that the helicopter
    was working right at the extreme limit of its range, but is it feasible
    that a helicopter that is capable of taking stretcher cases (and maybe
    medical staff for on-board treatment) would have a range in excess of
    800 miles (400 out and 400 back)? I presume in-flight refuelling of
    helicopters is a no-no :-)

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  • From Jonathan St. Cloud@21:1/5 to All on Tue Jan 10 11:26:42 2017
    Many Sea rescues are by helicopters that refuel in flight. A great book is "Para-rescue". It describes the heroic efforts of the guys from the national Guard 106th that do the rescues 1,000 miles out to sea, one rescue I read of, the helicopter flew
    through a hurricane, and had to hit a tanker something like 8 times during the flight.

    On Saturday, January 7, 2017 at 2:12:33 PM UTC-8, NY wrote:
    What is normally the maximum range of a medevac helicopter?

    I ask because I'm on a cruise liner that was about 600 miles off the
    west coast of Portugal last night when a passenger had to be evacuated because of a medical emergency. The captain turned due east, towards
    land, and opened the throttle wide for 6 hours. The closest point that
    we came to land was about 400 miles, before turning back onto the
    original course once the passenger had been retrieved by (presumably) helicopter and winchman in the small hours of this morning. A fixed-wing plane was also used in the rescue, though only to provide comms between
    ship, helicopter and Portuguese shore.

    The captain did comment in this morning's briefing that the helicopter
    was working right at the extreme limit of its range, but is it feasible
    that a helicopter that is capable of taking stretcher cases (and maybe medical staff for on-board treatment) would have a range in excess of
    800 miles (400 out and 400 back)? I presume in-flight refuelling of helicopters is a no-no :-)

    --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
    * Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)