Even in a national park, it will take time to respond to a satellite call.
Contrary to popular belief, search and rescue doesn't always send a helicopter. It's still common to send a ranger on foot and help walk somebody out on the trail. Or if that's not possible, to take a team of humans and carry someone out on a litter.
More generally... From what I was trained, ~12 hours is considered a fast rescue. The average time (according to the FAA's pilot survival training) is 31 hours, even with a known good location fix. 72 hours is very possible if there's inclement weather or difficulty locating someone.
It seems like this is a big advantage of the inreach in that you can text with EMS to convey if it is an urgent situation. You can also text friends/family to make alternate arrangements if the regular rescue people aren’t going to be fast enough.
Sounds like the Apple version lets you send some info also. And I would generally expect search and rescue to be able to get to you faster than friends.
That's true, it apparently has some multiple choice questions you can answer, which is definitely better than just hitting the big red button and letting rescuers guess what the nature of the situation is based on you position.
Being two-way, the other advantage of the inreach is that rescuers can ask you questions and tell you when they expect to arrive etc.
That said, the delta in functionality between what the iphone will offer and what an inreach offers in an emergency situation is probably not enough for the vast majority of people to want to purchase an inreach and a subscription, unless they also have a use for non-emergency communication outside of cell coverage.
At that point I wonder when quadcopters or fixed-wing UAVs will be feasible to at least establish visual contact with the sender of an emergency signal and/or drop off a sat-phone for bidirectional contact - there have been model aircraft capable of crossing the Atlantic [1] after all, and modern quadcopters like the DJI Matrice have something like an hour of flight time and 80 km/h speed so these could carry emergency supplies as well, no matter the terrain.
It’s already being done in a few places. But think bigger- the Royal Navy has done sea trails where they use drones to drop life rafts to sailors overboard. These aren’t little DJIs - look at the Malloy T150 and 400. The latter can also carry people and cargo up to 180kg (65kg for the former). These are in military service today with the Royal Marines and in Ukraine.
UK Border Force also uses a Tekever AR5 UAS over the English Channel to look for people crossing. It could be pretty useful in a SAR-situation though; 20 hour endurance carrying 50KG.
Think bigger also automatically means "think way more expensive". I was more thinking about something that can be placed in a small charging pod around the entrances of popular but dangerous areas.
Contrary to popular belief, search and rescue doesn't always send a helicopter. It's still common to send a ranger on foot and help walk somebody out on the trail. Or if that's not possible, to take a team of humans and carry someone out on a litter.
More generally... From what I was trained, ~12 hours is considered a fast rescue. The average time (according to the FAA's pilot survival training) is 31 hours, even with a known good location fix. 72 hours is very possible if there's inclement weather or difficulty locating someone.