Bristow Curaçao team receives AW139 with all-new mission system
Bristow’s Dutch Caribbean team has taken delivery of its second AW139, equipped with a world-first advanced mission system and described by the Bristow Group as “part of a new era of search and rescue (SAR) delivery”.
The aircraft has been equipped with a new advanced mission system from global engineering services and technology solutions company Nova Systems, which will augment the AW139’s SAR capabilities alongside previously adopted technologies. Heightened capabilities include “state-of-the-art integrated technology and leading-edge crew interfaces,” explains the Bristow Group.
The autonomous Dutch country of Curaçao, located in the southern Caribbean, will benefit from “the same technologies and design which will deliver the next generation or SAR for the Dutch Caribbean Coast Guard and also to our Bristow Government Service clients in the UK and Ireland,” explained the director of Bristow Netherlands James Lorraine.
Curaçao base manager Captain John McIntyre elaborated that alongside lifesaving SAR operations on and sea, “missions in Curaçao are a little different to SAR in other parts of the world,” with the team increasingly tasked with giving authorities “an unparalleled level of situational awareness” to enforce maritime security.
With heightened instances of illegal fishing or drug smuggling ongoing around the Dutch Antilles, “small boats equipped with powerful engines can’t outrun an aircraft and its sensor capabilities; the imaging systems installed on our aircraft contribute to an increasingly effective level of situational awareness, giving authorities a clear view of activity across a huge area,” continued McIntyre.
Director of government services Neil Ebberson concluded that the inclusion of Nova Systems’ capabilities marked “a critical achievement in our development of a new era of SAR,” with the ne mission system to “help keep our teams all over the word on the leading-edge of mission critical operations for years to come”.
