Soteria Search and Rescue is a British based consortium which, from February 2010 to February 2011 was the preferred bidder for the contract to run all UK civilian search and rescue helicopter services from 2012 onwards.[1][2]
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In 2006, the UK Government announced controversial plans to effectively privatise provision of search and rescue helicopters in order to replace the aging Westland Sea Kings currently in use, although they have suggested that crews may, at least partially, still be made up of military personnel.[3] This programme was name SAR-H.
Formed to take part in a competitive process announced in 2006 by the British Ministry of Defence, Department for Transport and the Maritime and Coastguard Agency to create a single helicopter SAR programme in the UK, the group is a consortium of four companies, each providing their own area of expertise, namely:
The aircraft chosen by Soteria was the Sikorsky S-92, already a proven airframe in Search and Rescue (SAR) operations. Soteria projected to utilise a fleet of 24 S-92s to deliver the SAR-H service from 12 bases around the UK.
In February 2010, Soteria SAR was announced as the preferred bidder for the UK SAR-H programme.[1]
On 8 February 2011, days before the contract was due to be signed, the UK Government halted the process after Soteria admitted that a former Royal Air Force officer who now worked for CHC Helicopter had passed commercially sensitive information on how the Ministry of Defence would commercially assess the bids. MoD Police are now investigating how the information came into the hands of CHC and Soteria.[2]