New Aircraft update - January 2019

03/01/2019

We are hoping to take delivery of our new aircraft very soon. Our new Britten-Norman Islander has been assembled and should be painted by the end of January. It then needs to have the new search equipment installed, and should be in the Islands in April.

This will be a much better aircraft in terms of the data that we can collect and the search equipment we will have on-board is much more advanced.

The thermal-imaging camera is a lot more stable, higher resolution and we can mix the image with standard imaging to allow us to see through ship windows. One of the features of the camera is that it can be pre-set before take-off to search a specific area long before the aircraft arrives at the scene.

The type of propellers the aircraft has been fitted with are quieter and the thermal capability of the plane means we can fly higher so it should not be as noisy, which is always a concern for us.

The crew will need to complete about a month of intensive training.