An air patrol volunteer for Coastguard says he has major safety concerns for boaties in the upper North Island after two teams were grounded.

The volunteer pilots in Auckland and Northland have been immediately benched, due to a change in safety standards which now requires pilots to have commercial licenses.

Coastguard Auckland Air Patrol president Andrew Lamb told Checkpoint the decision came as a total shock.

“We had been having some discussions and then on Friday morning, I got a phone call saying that the board had stood us down for taskings or flight training on the Saturday,” he said.

Regulation changes by the Rescue Coordination Centre New Zealand (RCCNZ) had implications for maritime rescue and aviation assets, Lamb said.

“Where we had been flying under one regulation, we no longer would qualify for that and we wouldn’t meet the new standards because of being a volunteer organisation effectively,” he said.

Lamb said it had not been well thought out as to how search and rescue support gaps would be filled.

“Is Defence Force going to be able to fill that gap? I don’t think so,” he said.

“We are a search vessel, so we guide the boats… onto the distressed vessel, or it might be a person in water. So we get there a lot quicker. We travel at over 140 knots. So we get there a lot faster than a boat would.”

There had been no details shared with grounded volunteers as to how the gap would be filled, Lamb said.

“[From] Ohakea to get an Air Force defense crew up to Auckland and Haraki Gulf… my understanding is it would take about four hours whereas we could probably get there in an hour to an hour and a half. So less than half the time and an awful lot cheaper as well,” he said.

“RCCNZ won’t task Coastguard in any of these searches because we don’t meet their requirements. So there’s just a big gap and I my concern is no one has actually thought about this gap. We’ve made a knee jerk response to something and we haven’t backfilled the solution.”

Coastguard said the decision was not a reflection on its air patrol volunteers but because Maritime New Zealand’s Rescue Coordination Centre introduced new standards for search and rescue operations last year.

After taking legal advice Coastguard decided to stand the air patrols down until the situation was resolved.