Originally Posted by
Lost on the Tundra
Here's an idea, not new in some respects. Just about every nation state has a national airline, most are functionally insolvent but I digress... Why not have said national carriers occasionally, as needs be, lease a couple of their best aircraft, decked out in feather boas and/or whatever outrageous livery desired, to VIPS? Could be a marketing scheme for aforementioned state vanity project, whilst that airliner is not carrying about our moral and intellectually superior elected/appointed leaders. Imagine: "Fly the very airplane Justin the magnificent coiffed his bouffant in! Free Chrystia Freeland™ bobblehead figurine included! (for a small monthly fee charged to your credit card, no rights included...)"
Save a ton of dough and give flight crews a well paid reason to get out of bed that day.
It’s a great theory, and it’s exactly what was done when the VC10 VIP role disappeared and 32 Sqn lost most of its assets.
A few years later a National Audit Office Report stated that more was being spent leasing aircraft from the likes of BA than it would cost to own and run the aircraft. This was the origins of Blair Force One, much as I hate to defend Blair, when on the back of this he proposed to purchase VIP aircraft again. This was abandoned following exactly the same type of press hysteria as is now appearing over this paint scheme.
‘According to an RAF source’ it will be ‘diplomatic and appropriate’ - I’m quite looking forward to a variation of the old VC10 scheme personally.