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SAR-H winner to be announced
The winning bidder for the UK's £5 billion Search and Rescue Helicopter programme will be announced tomorrow afternoon - Tuesday, February 9.
The two bidders, AirKnight and Soteria have been waiting since late last year for a decision which had been originally due in December.
The joint Department for Transport (DfT) and Ministry of Defence (MoD) contract will end the involvement of the Royal Air Force and the Royal Navy in Search and Rescue operations and new fleet of aircraft will operate under the banner of the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA), although some military aircrew, roughly 66, will be retained to operate a handful of the new helicopters.
The entire process has been closed to public scrutiny as a result of the competitive dialogue tendering process the programme has been operating under, however, reports in the UK press in recent weeks have suggested that the bids are both closely matched on price.
The AirKnight bid, a consortium made up of Lockheed Martin, VT and British International Helicopters have chosen the Eurocopter EC225 while Soteria, made up of CHC, Thales and the Royal Bank of Scotland have chosen the S-92 as their platform.
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