Mark Huber is an aviation industry veteran who has worked in the flight training, aircraft sales, aircraft component, and airport development businesses. He has flight time in more than 50 different and diverse aircraft, including helicopters, aerobatic aircraft, vintage warbirds, jet fighters, business jets and turboprops, and transport-category aircraft. He has jumped out of several of these—on purpose—with a parachute. His defense and aviation journalism has been published in a variety of national and international periodicals.

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Mark Huber

Britain's National Police Air Service (NPAS) was criticized as ineffective and inefficient in an audit released in late November by Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire &amp; Rescue Services (HMICFRS). It concluded the service was financially and managerially “unsustainable” in its current form.

 


The NPAS was formed in October 2012 by combining the air assets of police forces in England and Wales and expanding its service area to 46 jurisdictions. The rationale for forming the service was to make local air support more effective and efficient by integrating operations and thus reducing the number of helicopters, bases, and associated expenses. Before the formation of the NPAS, local forces operated 33 helicopters. The original plan called for operating 23 on-duty helicopters and three spares conducting flights from 20 bases; however, that was reduced to 15 on-duty helicopters and four spares, three on-duty fixed-wing aircraft and one spare, operating from 15 bases.

 


The auditors concluded that the average operational NPAS helicopter flies 2.5 hours per day, but that the number of operational helicopters can be as few as 10 nationwide. Collectively, the NPAS fleet flew 17,800 hours last year, but that represents a 45 percent reduction in flying hours compared to the aggregate flown by local forces before the creation of the NPAS. The service is overseen by a National Strategic Board that has consistently reduced NPAS's budget over the last five years.

 


<h2>Wait Times</h2>

 


The NPAS uses a dispatch model as opposed to a patrol model, and the auditors found that it provided below-expectations service to the point that “many incidents are over before an aircraft can reach the scene” and that "airborne response requests were canceled 40 percent of the time” due to response times. They further noted that “police officers are making less use of air support because it takes too long to arrive.” Part of this related to slow response time goals. “About 70 percent of calls for air support are allocated a target response time of 60 minutes, which in many cases is too slow to be useful,” the auditors said, adding that “more than half of all forces had to wait an average of longer than half an hour for a helicopter to arrive” once it had been requested. That included an average 22 minute time required merely to dispatch a helicopter to a “crime in action.” The auditors found that the NPAS “now operates insufficient aircraft to provide consistently prompt responses to incidents in all forces in England and Wales.”

 


The auditors also found that the NPAS's financial raison d'etre, increased efficiency, was fallacious. While the NPAS did&nbsp;marginally cost less in 2016 than the annual expense associated with separate services in 2009, those cost savings were achieved in large part through cutting the number of helicopters and dramatically chopping flight hours, effectively doubling the cost per flight hour. The auditors adjudged, “There is no clear evidence that current arrangements are financially any more of less efficient than when forces managed their own&nbsp;air support, and costs are not shared equitably between forces,” adding, “There is some evidence that the original estimates for operating a national police air service may have been too low.”

 


This underestimate spells trouble down the road. “NPAS in its current form is financially unsustainable: the capital investment strategy has left NPAS without adequate funding to replace its aging fleet of aircraft,” the auditors said. They faulted NPAS for over-investing in older aircraft rather than devoting capital to new aircraft acquisition. “This approach has resulted in a number of aircraft nearing the end&nbsp;of their working lives without plans and funding for sufficient new aircraft being in place.”

 


Overall, the auditors criticized the NPAS for having inept management. “The lack of an up-to-date strategy for police air support, the apparent inconsistency in force tasking of air support, the lower levels of support provided by the NPAS, the challenges around NPAS financing, and weakness in governance leads us to conclude that police leaders urgently need to reconsider the arrangements for police air support.”&nbsp;

 


NPAS leaders responded to the report by largely blaming its shortcomings on forces beyond their control.&nbsp;West Yorkshire Police and Crime Commissioner Mark Burns-Williamson, the chair of NPAS, cited budget cuts, noting that the NPAS's “running costs” dropped from $73.7 million to $50.9 million over the last five years. West Yorkshire Chief Constable Dee Collins said the drive for efficiency has forced the NPAS to “change the expectations of police forces about the role of air support in policing."

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