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German Bundespolizei helicopter fleet in action
By Matthias Gründer
Slowly the two Makila turbines of the navy blue Super Puma start up. Polizeihauptkommissar Matthias Tiedt, an experienced police pilot with some 6,000 flying hours to his credit, and Polizeioberkommissar Oliver Barton, also a helicopter pilots of many years' standing, monitor the displays and talk to each other over the intercom. Everything OK? Flight technician Polizeihauptkommissar Eckehard Stubnicki also reports that he is ready for action. The mission can begin!
The helicopter pulls up sharply from Fuhlendorf base in Schleswig-Holstein and heads for the sky in an easterly direction. After only a few minutes it lands for a moment on the grounds of the Office of the Federal Naval Police Board in Neustadt/Holstein to take on the man who will be in command on this mission, Polizeihauptmeister Lothar Matzky. Heavily laden with video camera and all the necessary documentation for the patrol, he takes up his seat. The helicopter travels eastwards, flies over Lübeck Bay and then follows the line of the Baltic Sea coast of Mecklenburg in the direction of Rügen.
Lothar Matzky watches the off-shore shipping attentively through field binoculars. He identifies the cargo boats, tankers, container and passenger ships and the numerous Baltic Sea ferries by country of origin and home port. Now and again he tells the pilots to fly closer to a ship, sometimes he leafs through his sheaf of documents. Black sheep which have already attracted attention on one or more occasions on account of infringements of the shipping regulations or even environmental offences are already known to him. But they are getting steadily rarer, as the Federal Police maintain an eagle eye over safety, security and clean operations. Suddenly a large, bright patch on the water surface comes into view ahead of the helicopter on the starboard side. Could this be contaminated ballast water or even a symptom of a fuel leakage? “Nothing to worry about, it's just jellyfish!” reports Matthias Tiedt over the headphones.
Long-established routine focussed on the unusual
The conclusion he has come to draws on many years' experience. Meanwhile the men hardly notice the wonders of nature, the holiday makers who are enjoying wonderful weather on the Darss peninsula. But when a bright white sailing boat looms ahead on the port site, even they grab their cameras, as it is not every day that they get to see a three-master like the Polish “Dar Mlodziezy”. The Super Puma flies a lap of honour around the sailing vessel, whose passengers and crew wave up to the helicopter. Then it is back to the everyday routine. Hours later the helicopter lands on Rügen to refuel and take a brief coffee break. On the return flight Oliver Barton sits in the right seat. Both pilots are entitled to act as commander of this helicopter type and they can therefore swap roles during the mission.
When D-HEGS lands back at the home base again in the late afternoon, the crew's verdict is “Nothing special to report”. Some brief but thorough post-mission maintenance work is performed, the helicopter is refuelled and parked in the spick and span hangar. The working day is over. The next flight will be tomorrow, maybe another maritime patrol, this time possibly over the North Sea, or it could be a special overland assignment, possibly with a quite different crew composition. The helicopter type could also be different, as most of the pilots are rated to fly several types.
Eight hours of flying and “nothing special to report”? So is all this expense actually worth it? “Most definitely!” says Gunter Carloff, Leitender Polizeidirektor and the most senior officer amongst all the German Federal Police pilots. “It is precisely when nothing happens that we know the men have done a good job.”
Gunter Carloff, himself an “old hand” with over 9,500 flying hours, explains briefly the role of the German Federal Police Air Support Unit: “The top priority is of course surveillance flights like the one just flown over the sea, but we also monitor the high-speed railway lines. Then we also conduct air rescue operations, provide assistance in disasters such as forest fires or floods, collaborate with GSG-9 to combat terrorism, and finally we transport government and parliamentary VIPs.”
Every flying hour is training for the crew, irrespective of the mission involved. Each member of the unit must be in a position at any time to satisfy the most challenging of requirements. Nowhere else is there such a variety of possible missions for pilots. Today they are still providing security for the G8 summit in Heiligendamm, tomorrow they will fly firefighting missions over Portugal and the day after they will be monitoring the sea off the coast of Malta.
International certification makes international missions possible
How is that possible? “We operate civil state aircraft with certification to international ICAO regulations,” says the Leitende Polizeidirektor. “Our helicopters bear civil identifiers. Training and maintenance comply with Part 145 EASA, we apply the civil air law and the instructions for commercial flight operations with helicopters, to mention but a small selection.” All this means that the German Federal Police helicopters can be operated commercially as well and can also be rapidly made available to provide emergency assistance abroad.
But above all, when it comes to air rescue and the training of their crew, the German Federal Police are a model for the whole of Europe. “Most people associate air rescue just with the yellow helicopters of the ADAC vehicle rescue service,” says Carloff. “But in reality our helicopters provide almost half of all rescue services in Germany.” The fact that the public do not associate the orange-coloured BO105 with the German Federal Police may also be due to the fact that they were procured by the Federal Ministry of the Interior as special helicopters for disaster control. Because, fortunately, disasters do not occur that often, the rest of the time the helicopters are deployed with the inscription “Air rescue” for precisely that purpose, albeit with a federal police officer in the cockpit.
They are trained at a special flying school which also develops the standards for police pilots of the federal states and even trains foreign policemen. Every year the German Federal Police has a requirement for ten new pilots and six flight technicians. This means that some thought needs to go into public relations and attractive pay. But anyone who is enthusiastic about flying and is looking for an interesting and varied job should feel at home with the blue police pilots.
From FLUG REVUE 11/2007
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