But the RAF insists it was a legitimate training exercise to teach William how to fly over water.
"Right Wills, now the tricky bit of your training - Flying over water. Here we are flying S&L over the land. The aircraft is trimmed out and all we need to do now is look for the coast. You will recognise the coast as it is normally found between the land and the sea.
There we are, we fly over the coast and then keeping the aircraft S&L we fly over the sea.... tricky isn't it but I'm sure you will soon get the hang of it"