Western Canada has been without any dedicated search-and-rescue airplanes since the start of 2025, when the military quietly pulled the last of two Hercules aircraft and their crewmembers from British Columbia.
The aircraft were initially relocated from Winnipeg to Vancouver Island in 2022 to fill a gap in Canada’s search-and-rescue coverage caused by delays with the military’s new Kingfisher rescue planes.
But the Royal Canadian Air Force withdrew one of the Hercules planes to Winnipeg last year, and the remaining aircraft was recalled on Jan. 14, meaning the nearest search-and-rescue planes are at least 2,000 kilometres and several hours of flying time from an emergency on the B.C. coast.
Already several years behind schedule, the new Kingfishers do not yet have a firm deployment date, leaving the military reliant on the Winnipeg-based Hercules for all fixed-wing search-and-rescue calls from Vancouver Island to the Far North.
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Current estimates are that the Kingfishers will reach their initial operating capability by 2026, with full operating capacity not planned until 2029 or 2030, according to two spokespeople at the Department of National Defence.
“The CC-130H Hercules is a proven and effective fixed-wing search-and-rescue platform with tremendous range, capable of flying great distances with enough fuel to remain on-scene at a SAR mission for long periods,” National Defence spokesperson Kened Sadiku said in an emailed statement Tuesday.
“Because of this, the CC-130H Hercules provides fixed-wing search-and-rescue service to areas in Canada’s North that are just as far away from Winnipeg as Search and Rescue Region Victoria.”
But the Hercules fleet is already stretched thin with other duties, including transporting troops and equipment abroad, and providing air-to-air refueling for fighter jets.
The Joint Rescue Co-ordination Centre in Victoria, which covers all of Western Canada, receives approximately 3,000 search-and-rescue calls per year, according to the military’s most-recent estimates. Three-quarters of those calls are for maritime incidents, while 10 per cent are for air incidents and 15 per cent are requests for humanitarian assistance.
Many of those calls can be serviced by the air force’s Cormorant search-and-rescue helicopters, though their range and flight time is limited. “The Cormorant can, and does, successfully conduct SAR missions on its own on both the East and West coasts,” Sadiku said.
“However, there are a few missions that do occasionally occur that are outside of the effective radius of action of the CH-149 and for those missions, if fixed-wing support is needed, the CC-130H Hercules remains able to support from Winnipeg.”
‘Canadians at increased risk’
The federal government announced in 2016 that it was buying 16 Kingfishers to fill the search-and-rescue role following the planned retirement of its decades-old Buffalo aircraft in 2022.
The deal with European manufacturer Airbus was intended to have the new twin-propeller planes in the air by 2020. But the progress soon stalled – first due to concerns about the aircraft’s operating manual, and later by the COVID-19 pandemic and legal issues around the naming of the aircraft.
The delays prompted the military to announce the relocation of two Hercules aircraft to Canadian Forces Base Comox in May 2022, where they were to remain until the Kingfishers were operational.
The first Hercules was withdrawn from Comox in September 2024, “following the conclusion of the busiest portion of the SAR season,” Sadiku said.
But Steffan Watkins, an Ottawa-based defence analyst, says his flight-tracking data indicate the plane was more likely withdrawn five months earlier, before the summer search-and-rescue season began.
“If the Royal Canadian Air Force is going to promote when they apply a stopgap to reduce the risk to Canadians of there being no replacement aircraft to take the Buffalo’s place, they should have the courage to publicly state when they make difficult choices with the limited resources they have, and put the lives of Canadians at increased risk,” Watkins said in an interview with CTV News.
“Despite the commander of the RCAF saying they would have two CC-130H Hercules positioned in Comox to save lives and fill the gap left by retiring the Buffalo, they silently removed the redundancy they had in place a year ago, and silently withdrew the last fixed wing Hercules from Comox.”
The initial $2.4-billion deal with Airbus included the construction of a new training facility at 19 Wing Comox, plus an additional $2.3 billion to support and maintain the aircraft for 15 years.
National Defence did not address whether it was a shortage of personnel, aircraft replacement parts or incomplete base infrastructure that was contributing to the current delays with the Kingfisher rollout.
Six of the new aircraft are already on the ground in Comox, according to Watkins, while the military says it only needs five fully functional aircraft, along with trained crew, maintenance technicians and infrastructure, before initial operating capability can be declared.
After the Kingfishers are approved for operations in Comox, they will then enter service in Manitoba, Ontario and Nova Scotia “over the next few years,” Sadiku said, “though the specific schedule has yet to be finalized.”
In the meantime, the military says the Joint Rescue Coordination Centre in Victoria can call upon the air force’s submarine-hunting Aurora aircraft, or request assistance from the United States Coast Guard, for maritime emergencies.
Unlike the Hercules, however, the Aurora is not equipped to deploy search-and-rescue technicians or drop lifesaving equipment from the air, Sadiku acknowledged.
