Al, I think you are the first person that is associated with CASARA that has posted. Welcome, glad you are here!

I. What is JRCC and how does CASARA handle search details? Would information be considered public and freely provided or would it just be provided as a courtesy and at the discretion of the organization? Maybe you could enlighten us on the character of CASARA and its people.

There is a lot of fear here that lots of people will swamp the search teams with requests and ruin any possible relations InternetSAR might need in the future. This comes from the experience with the Fossett search where the U.S. Civil Air Patrol WAS swamped with requests because of the high level of publicity. This was exacerbated by the CAP spokesperson who lacked some public relations skills. The Boychuk search has no where near the high profile of the Fossett search and some of these fears may be exaggerated but are still a concern.

If you have contacts at CASARA or suggestions on how to communicate our need for facts, may be you could send a Private Message to Vanaj. I think he volunteered to take the lead on this.

II. Although I am not a pilot, but I have concluded that pilots approach the whole search thing from a different perspective. Pilots want to have a "reasonable expectation" that the area they search is a likely area where their fellow pilot has disappeared. Hashing out all the known facts of the lost pilots flight is a very productive enterprise that helps the pilot searchers get that "reasonable expectation" that motivates them to search. This is why I think it is imperative that a direct contact is made CASARA to get the facts. Otherwise what motivates this very skilled group of searchers will not be there and they will not participate.