As no-one has yet mentioned the cost of doing these favours for royals I will start it.
Andy, as the poor mans second choice, is not nearly as cared for as Charlie. He cost more or less the same as most other jockeys' training (plus the security bit) as nobody really cared if he survived or not and I'm sure his dad would have made sure he would have passed - if he actually did or not...
Young Charlie (being the royals 1st preferred item) was REEEEAAALLLLYY expensive to get as far as he did.
Almost every thing he touched in the RAF was half-lifed (meaning anything over half its normal life expectancy was removed and replaced with new or 1/4 lifed items. And every thing else was polished to within two thousandths of an Inch of its usefulness. (o.oo5mm to you youths)
A Vulcan was almost re-built to accommodate a single back seat ("I'd really like to go up in one of those") flight.
And the RAF probably sighed a BIG sigh when the Fish-heads eventually got him on their books.
So the answer to the OP probably is...
The RAF couldn't afford (even then) to put Royals in Fast Jets and also couldn't afford the RISK of putting a 1st born in one regularly.
Last edited by Rigga; 27th Jul 2013 at 20:31.