Even if you managed to charge people (or their SAR insurances) tens of thousands of dollars per rescue, I'm not sure that would entirely pay for running such a service.
But I suspect their actual business model will be to charge for non-emergency messaging, which might just be able to subsidize the emergency use case.
Are there cases of people actually being charged for their backcountry rescues? I know it's theoretically allowed many places but I'm not aware of anyone actually being billed.
Generally, SAR teams would rather the R continue to stand for Rescue rather than Recovery (of a body).
As soon as SAR involves a helicopter, I remember hearing you're looking at a hefty bill in many places, even if the SAR teams themselves don't charge anything. (Not sure why/how that is the case – maybe the helicopter is often operated by a for-profit company, essentially taking the SAR crew as passenger?)
As someone who’s been rescued via helicopter, I can state at least in my case there wasn’t a large bill. The only thing I was charged for was the out of network ER visit.
Yeah, I'd imagine the helicopter is where the big expense lies and those are mostly private hires. The SAR teams around me are first responders already on duty or volunteers. They still have expenses when launching a mission but driving a dozen people to a trailhead is cheaper than a chopper.
But “iPhone saves man’s life after he fell down a mountain” sounds a whole lot better than “worlds richest company charges man who nearly died $25 to save his life”.
