We are all ageing, from the very day we are born. I am 70 years old and I am aged. Am I too old therefore to have any useful service? I am well over the retirement age so should I be looked at with suspicion because I could crash at any moment?

The Royal Cayman Islands Police Service (RCIPS) helicopter is the hot topic of the day since the deadly crash of a similar helicopter last week in Glasgow, Scotland.

I say similar because although RCIPS helicopter is the same make and model number they are not the same. The helicopter that crashed into the family bar tragically killing nine persons was newer than the RCIPS one.

Should that mean our ageing helicopter, as it has been called, be immediately replaced before it falls from the sky onto one of our major hotels? Should it even be allowed to fly?

Every time we hear and see our ageing helicopter flying in the sky should we immediately run for cover and pray to God for our safety and the ones foolhardy enough to be on it?

Of course not.

In 2009 when the RCIPS helicopter was brought into service, some MLAs called it “a worn out wreck”. The oldest plane in the Cayman Airways Express fleet, a Twin Otter, was built in 1979, two decades before the helicopter. Has anyone ever described that as ageing? And the Otter has flown considerably more air miles than the ‘aging’ helicopter.

The helicopter is approaching 15 years old and it was retired by U.K.’s Thames Valley police force in 2007 due to new civil aviation requirements for instrument flight capability on helicopters and not because it was past its fly by date!

In a statement released by the RCIPS on Tuesday they said:

“We are not in a position at present to estimate when the current helicopter may have to be replaced. It is a fully functioning critical resource, which is rigorously maintained with parts replaced within life cycles and low engine miles.

“We hope that it will last for a number of years to come.

“The other two possibilities – sharing a helicopter with another Caribbean jurisdiction or renting an aircraft – are not being contemplated as geographical constrains would make sharing a helicopter wholly impractical and renting a helicopter is not currently an option.

“The 1999 Eurocopter model operated by the RCIPS is a Eurocopter EC-135 T1. The T1 has Turbomeca 2B1A1 engines and the T2 used in Scotland has Turbomeca 2B2 engines, but to the layman there is little difference.”

Note in the statement the RCIPS said our helicopter has “low engine miles”. In fact during the two years between its retirement from Thames Valley and its arrival here it was not used.

It probably does fewer miles in a month than the private commercial helicopter here does in a week.

At the price paid for it, $1.8M, it would seem to have been a bargain even though it didn’t have the ‘all singing, all dancing’ air ambulance with SAR capabilities that MLAs decided they wanted after it had been bought. I wonder what that would have cost?

Hundreds of aircraft flying in the skies today are older than the pilots that fly them! They aren’t falling from the skies every second.

Any thought then of retiring the helicopter would seem to be daft, despite rumours that it is contemplated to be replaced in two years time.

Although I am ageing, don’t call me that. It makes me feel I am too OLD for any good use.