Armed forces aircraft hire

[MUFC_fan]

Just a quick question:

Is the MOD able to take hire of any aircraft it wants if needed as with cruise liners?

Many thanks!

[Frogga]

Not to sure, but Air Seychelles,Air Italy, Meridian Airlines and Astraeus are operating out of Brize nearly every day at the moment, Monarch used to be regular visitors.

[tornadoken]

There are 2 cases: if the intended Use is deemed as insurable, MoD simply issues a commercial invitation to tender and takes the cheapest/best Bid, indemnifying the Operator for War Risk such as damage/loss at destination. Capacity ("non-skeds", "supplementals") exists for such arisings - e.g. UN Aid - served by such operators as Titan in UK, Air Atlanta Icelandic, World in US.

If no Bid is received - say, the intended Use is uninsurable, prices are unacceptable, or no capacity is spare - then Govt. could apply the equivalent of STUFT - Ships Taken Up From Trade - and requisition UK-registered assets at "market rate" "in the National Interest". (I believe) that involves an Order in (Privy) Council which would be part of wider "mobilisation" of National Effort. (I know of no such instance since Suez, 1956).

[WHBM]

Ministry of Defence chartering from the lowest bidder has a long history. In the 1950s they gave an initial, and much welcomed, boost to the British independent sector, accounting for a significant amount of capacity. It really annoyed the blokes on the other side of Whitehall at the Ministry of Transport, who looked after then-monopolistic, nationalised, BOAC and BEA, and who thought they could just run an operation bloated with the overhead costs, and hand the bill in the form of high standard fares to everyone, including the military, who was travelling.

In recent times, however, the MoD has moved away from UK carriers to use anybody who was a bit cheaper, and of course there always is somebody from overseas who is. So the UK taxpayers money flows out while UK airlines struggle in the current climate. This of course was the socialist valhalla that the last government sought to acheve.

A few other foreign governments have followed a similar course. Spain, with a substantial base of charter carriers of its own with modern equiment, decided in 2003 to use a Ukrainian Yak-42 operator to take Spanish troops to and from Afghanistan, which was lost with all on board approaching a refuelling stop at an obscure (but cheap fuel) point in Turkey. Hey ho, it all cost a bit less, so that's alright then. Do they have OBE equivalents for civil servants in Spain ?

[MUFC_fan]

At the end of the day, I would think that 7 hours on a Monarch A300 would be terrible, but when going to somewhere like Afghanistan or Iraq, I'm sure it's the last thing on their minds. If it was an ideal world, it should be that all troops who serve on the front line should have an SQ A345 everywhere they go but it just doesn't work in real life.

Our taxes pay for their flights and as a taxpayer, I would rather them take the cheapest charter and then spend the remainder from the budget on protecting front line troops.

Just my opinion.