C/S G.003 - INTRODUCTION TO THE COSPAS-SARSAT SYSTEM Issue 7

The criterion for alert timing is that the distress alert must be provided to the responsible RCC within

fifteen minutes of the initial reception of the signal from the beacon. For the GEOSAR and MEOSAR systems, the alerts are normally computed within this time, and will be transmitted to the responsible RCC on time.

 The nature of the LEOSAR system requires that the LUT collect the data for a complete satellite pass over the LUT before it can compute the independent solution and pass it to the MCC for distribution.

 Once the solution has been sent to the associated MCC, the incident alert will normally be sent through the data distribution network to the destination RCC or SPOC in less than a minute.