Last summer I was fortunate enough to fly in a search and rescue Sea King over the Northumberland  coastline in northern England. My flight seems to bear more relevance due to the fact that sea Kings are coming out of service very shortly and I will have been one of the last passengers to have flown in a SAR (search and rescue) SeaKing for fun.

After a few hours of waiting around inside the squadrons crew room for the helicopter crew to become free to be able to take passengers we were led to collect a helmet and then walked across the helipad towards where the Sea King was hovering, after a short brief from the winch man we were hooked in and winched up. The sheer force of the wind was incredible and the noise also was loud to say the least.
The SAR Sea King I was fortunate to fly in.
As I was winched up the short distance the smile on my face grew, eventually I reached the side bay and was unclipped and then ushered to a seat on the left hand side the helicopter looking directly out of the open bay door. The view was incredible and the sensation of hovering was something I wasn't expecting to be note worthy but  it was. I had flown in a light aircraft before this flight, however this is not really comparable to anything I have ever done before.
The view form the seats out of the open bay door whilst hovering.
After being plugged in to the crews radio and advised not to talk through it unless necessary (i.e don't start screaming) we set off. After a couple of minutes of getting use to the sensation of flight in a helicopter with door open I was offered to go and stand at the front of the helicopter with the pilots to observe. What initially struck me was how relaxed they were flying, for them, it seemed, this flight was just like driving car and  required very little attention as they talked on about how their week end went, this is certainly not a criticism and in all honestly I was in ore of their ability . As we flew down the coastline on a beautifully clear day I couldn't think of anything better I could be possibly be doing. It was awesome. How lucky were these pilots to be doing this as their job. Five minutes later my time at the front was up and I returned to the very rear of the helicopter and sat in a observers seat. We started are return journey back to base banking quite hard to our right before continuing on are relatively straight and level flight back.

As we landed I felt disappointed that this flight had come to an end and noted how unlikely it is that I will ever do something like that again. Unfortunately, I can't comment on the quality of the landing as it was my first ever helicopter flight but, all in all I can't fault the quality of flying I experienced.