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Old 22nd May 2012, 21:59
  #27 (permalink)  
brit bus driver
 
Join Date: Apr 2002
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The CC150's VVIP fit is certainly not over the top, but thankfully the CO a few years ago managed to resist a move (from within DND) to have it removed in order to free up more 'regular' seating for when it's not being used for VVIP trips. I recall that it involved a quick call to the Director of Royal Travel....

At the time, the Prime Minister (Chretien) wouldn't fly in it as he was in opposition when it was commissioned and would spend hours in a Club seat under a blanket! The benefit was that we would use it on the low yield trips, including (long-since defunct) route trainers!

I flew to a number of G8s & the like and was always disappointed that the UK was (is) always the only nation without VVIP transport as one of its core military roles. As BEagle points out, configuring one of the Voyagers would fill the gap and would surely be cheaper than contracting out BA/Virgin however many times a year. To be honest, even if MoD were to contract ATr (rather than BA etc) to provide the aircraft, they might at least look like they were Brit Mil operated!

Oh, and for the record on repatriations, ratty1....

That picture posted by Fox3 was run on the front page of the Daily Mail a few years ago in sharp contrast to the way that Thames Valley Police viewed escorting the repatriations as a 'non-essential' duty, and thus, didn't, resulting in images like this:



Thankfully, this caused them to, ahem, review the policy.
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