This seems an excellent idea, straight out of Catch-22. It can surely be extended beyond just bucket-and-spade charters. I am personally looking forward to the Business Express class, using Tornadoes and Jaguars to shuttle middle management to important meetings around Europe and the ultimate First Express making better use of all those new Typhoons (EFs) that are due otherwise to be mothballed. Children’s birthday parties on the Lancaster, helicopters on construction sites and nine directors at a time in board meetings with the Red Arrows are all possible.
The scope is endless, nearly, for not-being-used military facilities to be brought into useful money earning roles. The Royal Navy and the Army have a role to play in generating more cash for the Government leviathan to spend on its schemes.
It’s not just commercial pilots whose jobs are threatened by this venture. Bouncers and Group 4 should be wary of the SAS, ferry captains without flight decks may look apprehensively at carriers, celebrity chefs tremble at the thought of the mobile catering corps and trawlermen can be scared by packs of hunter killer subs with nets behind them.
And all this without considering what the WAAF and guardsmen could do for the tourist trade.