Performance dashboard
Response times
In 2022/23, our aircraft crews were deployed to 4,621 priority one incidents.
These are when there is an immediate threat to a life, a crime is in action or there is a national or terrorism incident.
The average time to reach a scene from receiving a call was 12 minutes, 18 seconds.
For priority two incidents, which are incidents where deployment will lead to the prevention or detection of crime, 9,502 were attended, with the average time to reach the scene being 21 minutes and 54 seconds.
88.9% of incidents attended by an NPAS crew resulted in a positive outcome, most of which were achieved as direct result of air support.
Our skilled team of dispatchers, based in our dedicated Operations Centre at West Yorkshire Police headquarters, assess each call for the appropriate response.
Positive outcomes (text only)
Vulnerable person located: direct result of air support 371, assisted by air support 155
Missing person located: direct result of air support 613, assisted by air support 352
Wanted suspect located: direct result of air support 2,738, assisted by air support 1,686
Target vehicle located: direct result of air support 1,373, assisted by air support 527
Flying hours per region
In 2022/23, our aircraft flew a total of 11,177 hours.
Flying hours (text only)
British Transport Police: Total flying hours (rotary and fixed wing) 55:33, fixed wing only 3:14
East Midlands: Total flying hours (rotary and fixed wing) 504:16, fixed wing only 99:36
East: Total flying hours (rotary and fixed wing) 1,183:06, fixed wing only 18:42
London: Total flying hours (rotary and fixed wing) 1,596:27, fixed wing only 0:00
North East: Total flying hours (rotary and fixed wing) 1,963:24, fixed wing only 316:56
North West: Total flying hours (rotary and fixed wing) 1,639:37, fixed wing only 132:46
South East: Total flying hours (rotary and fixed wing) 1,224:19, fixed wing only 30:37
South West: Total flying hours (rotary and fixed wing) 1,292:33, fixed wing only 16:11
Wales: Total flying hours (rotary and fixed wing) 832:03, fixed wing only 13:04
West Midlands: Total flying hours (rotary and fixed wing) 885:41, fixed wing only 55:52
Total: Total flying hours (rotary and fixed wing) 11,177:03, fixed wing only 687:03
Deployments by base
Our aircraft were deployed 18,566 times.
Deployments include all attended taskings, plus those that are abandoned, diverted or cancelled by a police force.
Deployments (text only)
Husbands Bosworth: 525
Benson: 401
North Weald: 1,747
London: 3,659
Redhill: 1,082
Newcastle: 1,047
Carr Gate: 1,935
Barton: 2,416
Hawarden: 523
Bournemouth: 373
Exeter: 578
Almondsbury: 848
St Athan: 1,251
Birmingham: 1,296
Other: 15
Fixed wing: 870
Total: 18,566
Availability
An aircraft is deemed available when all its mission systems and crew are ready to be tasked (subject to weather limitations).
In 2022/23, average aircraft availability was 70.4%.
It is important to note that due to essential, annual maintenance requirements, it is impossible to achieve 100% availability. There are up to 10 weeks of planned maintenance per aircraft, per year.
Engineering (14.6%) and pilot issues, such as flight time limitations (6.4%), accounted for the main reasons for unavailability.
Just over 36% of calls for service were cancelled and, of these, over 77% were before an aircraft lifted.
When an NPAS crew is cancelled, it is normally because a person or vehicle has been found, prior to our arrival.
43.7% of cancellations were for this reason. We also responded to a small number of calls which either had to be abandoned, due to a change in weather (0.9%) or had to be diverted to a higher priority task (0.8%).
Taskings
Our dynamic tasks can be varied, but most involve searching for a suspect, target vehicle or vulnerable person.
In fact, 81% of all our calls for service in 2022/23 were in response to ‘incidents or crimes in action’.
A further 9.9% of our taskings were to support strategic policing requirements, such as incident management, specialist operations and pre-planned events, and 9% were to meet local force priorities, with things like proactive patrols in crime hotspot areas, community or sporting events and the transportation of prisoners.
Type of taskings (text only)
Suspect search: 3,781
Vehicle search: 4,317
Missing person search: 3,067
Injured person/concern for welfare: 1,922
Containment of scene: 544
Public order incident: 206
Thermal imagery request: 436
Vehicle follow: 255
Other: 734
Total: 15,262
Declined calls for service
There will always be times when, unavoidably, we have to decline a call for our assistance.
The main reasons are unsafe weather conditions for flying, engineering requirements, crew abstractions for training or pilot flight time limitations.
But sometimes, a request simply isn’t viable for air support.
In 2022/23, our Operations Centre staff declined 16.5% of calls.