Sir, – The withdrawal of the police helicopter from Durham Tees Valley Airport is to be regretted as was the disbandment of the former North East Air Support Unit which had two aircraft, a fixed-wing BN Islander and an EC-135 helicopter. These two aircraft based 30 miles apart at the North-East's two regional airports provided an excellent service with both aircraft capable of performing 90 per cent of routine police missions. However, when required each aircraft could perform special operations such as tactical transport with the helicopter and long range, long endurance "all weather" missions with the aeroplane. Nevertheless, as was pointed out by a former chief constable, police aircraft, particularly helicopters are very expensive to purchase and to operate and, on average, spend 85 per cent of time sitting on the ground at standby.

The dilemma, for the police, is that if a "Rolls Royce" service with two aircraft 30 miles apart is unaffordable, will a second rate service with one helicopter at Newcastle and the next at Wakefield, near Leeds prove to be a waste of finite resources?

For the police in Newcastle and in Leeds there will probably be little change but for others, transit times will increase and on many occasions the aircraft will arrive at an incident too late to be of any value. For incidents on the East Coast there will, in fact, be only two police air support bases, from the top of Scotland to the South East tip of England; one at Newcastle and the other in Essex.

However, there are, for humanitarian search and rescue (SAR) missions, some viable alternatives. Although the North-East will lose its RAF Sea King helicopter base at Boulmer, as well as the Sea King base at Leconfield near Beverley in East Yorkshire, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) will have three SAR helicopter bases, on the East Coast, at Inverness in Scotland, at Humberside Airport and at Manston in Kent.

In addition, the Civil Air Patrol has a fleet of some 70 aircraft, aeroplanes, light helicopters and autogyros that can be called upon to assist ground search parties, mountain rescue teams and HM Coastguard Auxiliary Rescue Teams, with the proverbial "eye in the sky".

In the US, the US Civil Air Patrol is responsible for 80 per cent of overland SAR missions on behalf of the US Air Force.

JAMES A COWAN MBE

Chairman, UK Civil Air Patrol

Belmont, Durham.