£7m St Athan search and rescue base launches

Rescues of a fallen horse rider, someone trapped in a gorge and a man stuck in mud are among the first missions completed by a new helicopter unit.

The St Athan Search and Rescue Helicopter Service was officially launched on Thursday.

From its £7m Vale of Glamorgan base, it will conduct land and sea missions previously carried out by the RAF.

It started operating on 4 October and has so far completed eight missions.

The new base is one of 10 being set up around the UK by 2017, with 22 helicopters set to conduct land and sea searches on behalf of HM Coastguard.

A ten-year contract was awarded by the Department for Transport to Bristow Helicopters to deliver the service.

Two of the new bases are in Wales, with one in Caernarfon, Gwynedd replacing RAF Valley and St Athan covering an area once served by helicopters from RAF Chivenor in Devon.

There are two Agusta Westland AW139 helicopters based at St Athan, each worth around £7.5m and fitted with night vision and state-of-the art medical equipment.

Capt Olly Padbury says the team had their first call within 45 minutes of going live

"We aim to be ready to fly within 15 minutes of the call in the day and 45 minutes at night. But for the last emergency we were airborne in seven minutes," said Capt Olly Padbury.

"We also had a call within 45 minutes of going live on 4 October, so it shows the importance of the service."

The 30-person team will be on 24-hour call and cover an area that runs roughly between mid Wales, Bude in Cornwall, Oxford and London.

Capt Padbury said the base's location meant the two helicopters could get quickly to areas that receive large amounts of emergency calls- such as Worm's Head on Gower, Fishguard in Pembrokeshire and Woolacombe Beach in Devon.

'Challenge'

Moving at speeds of roughly 160mph, the crew travelled to Weston-Super-Mare, Somerset, in seven minutes to answer a call of a man stuck in mud recently.

Other call-outs have been to a horse rider who fell in west Wales and someone who had fallen at Cheddar Gorge, Somerset.

Another recent mission was to aid the Central Beacons Mountain Rescue Team, who made an emergency call after a walker fell near Ystradfellte, Powys and had a pelvis injury.

Richard Parkes, the director of maritime operations at the Maritime and Coastguard Agency, called the base launch a "bittersweet" moment.

He praised the previous rescue work conducted from Chivenor, saying: "A high benchmark has been set by the RAF through 70 years of search and rescue.

"The challenge is to emulate it."