Couple missing in Kahurangi National Park

Never mind Geeves, if he gets too chilly he can just go back to his nice warm hotel :)

It was wishful thinking not worry

For reference given the discussions of costs in this thread, I'll just just drop the link to the other thread in which establishes costs at around $83,700. https://tramper.nz/forums/thread/10837 https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12344131 Breakdown: NZDF - $62,156 for military involvement from May 21 to 28. This includes $57,070 for NH90 flights (including personnel, fuel, airport charges and other related costs. Police - About $21,508 This included $17,387 for helicopter rental. The rest was for accommodation and food.

Just looking on phone so a bit limited, but, no factoring in of wage costs?

doesnt mention wages apparently not all the costs have been worked out fully... so that may be added in then theres the free time of the volunteers that doesnt get charged...

Yeah, volunteers time will always be an unconsidered cost and lead to underestimates. However, if you are not accounting for paid professionals like defense force and police that is just being irresponsible. It is not like there isn't also an opportunity cost associated with using these professionals (especially police).

when they say the running cost of the air force helicopter are they just using a basic hourly cost of running it, or are they using the hourly rate a similar helicopter would be charged out at , to cover business expenses and maintenance costs. the full running cost of an NH90 would be far more than any other helicopter. 4000hp.... a squirrel helicopter has 800hp and goes through 130 litres of fuel an hour... the nh90 goes through two tonnes of fuel in a few hours... it has the same technology as an airliner in it, and that is extremely expensive to maintain... the air force have a dedicated team of software developers to maintain the Orion aircraft with all their avionics... someone somewhere has to get paid to keep it all working and update it.. claim here by NZ first they cost $1180 an hour to fly. https://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/PA1704/S00268/rnzafs-nh90s-unreliable-money-guzzlers.htm hiring a squirrel form one NZ company comes at $2600 an hour + gst.. so the true costs of running an nh90 helicopter may be a lot higher. they are massive helicopters, way bigger than the previous iroquois... although we are already bank rolling them anyway from taxes... you can argue you're just paying the basic costs of putting them in the air for the search, if it adds to the normal hours they would do then it still adds to the scheduled maintenance which comes after a specific amount of time in the air... the question is , is it actually cheaper to just go and hire more smaller helicopters rather than pay the big bucks to keep an nh90 in the air... but you would need several commercial helicopters to ferry around the same no's of SAR people... not straight forward to compare

It's there in the article: >This rate includes marginal personnel costs, fuel, airport charges and other related costs. marginal costs, ie. extra costs incurred due to the search for this couple, not including the base costs of owning all these defence force and police assets and having staff employed, just the extra costs incurred above what would have been incurred anyway in the absence of this search and rescue operation. Seems to me a reasonable way to calculate the cost of such an operation. Given the decision to own such things as a nh90 helicopter, it might as well be used, it and personnel are going to be doing some flying in any case for training, they might as well do something with a real objective to achieve.

i've worked for a company that provides technical support for high end avionics in aircraft , i dont think all the costs were taken into account for the NH90's their maintenance costs would be extremely high, a lot lot higher than more basic helicopters like squirrels that are the mainstay of helicopters in NZ

So to summarise: “It’s very expensive to operate an NH90 and mount a SAR” “We, the taxpayer, are paying for it” “They were very naughty to sneak away during lockdown and careless to get lost” “And an apology and expression of gratitude would be greatly appreciated”