"The RAF aircraft we had lined up is no longer available and, unfortunately, with taxpayers' money etc, we are unable to justify chartering a private aircraft on this occasion as this option is extremely expensive,"
How much does it cost per hour to run a HS125 including the cost of crew, servicing, maintenance etc?
How much is charter fo this? £3000/hr?
A little more expensive NetJets 25 flight Hrs for about £100k but much cheaper if you by a share which gives you short notice to aircraft anywhere with recovery back-up.
I am told plenty of Royals/politicians around the world (maybe for private use I don't know or on friends accounts) have used NetJets.
brandnew:
As for the RAF failing the Army, for every bad example there is I am sure a good one. It is just that the voices of the p155ed off minority are always heard shouting louder than the silent majority.
I'll quote one for the good:
Does anyone in the Army remember when a Tristar crew volunteered to sacrafice their Christmas to fly down to MPA on Christmas eve and recover the charter that had been broken at Brize, arriving back at Brize in the early hours of Boxing day?
And I don't remember any of the troops complaining when we put them up in a hotel when we went U/S on the way into Pristina, or when we diverted into Rhodes on the way back from Jeddah rather than getting them to Cyprus. There was no thread started on pprune with the title "Excellent journey with RAF, even gave us a short break in sunny Rhodes"
Just search pprune for stories of compationate repatriations for a few more examples.
Yes things go wrong sometimes but don't always blame the guys at the coal face for trying to operate with poorly provisioned tools.
You don't see the RAF blaming the Army for not getting a job done because they have been given inadequate resources.