" A check of the stricken £150million transport plane revealed the collision had punctured a tyre - which was replaced with a spare carried on board.
However, during the emergency landing a second tyre was damaged and needed to be replaced before the plane could take off"
The article is a classical piece of Mail histrionics, orientated towards those who actually believe the contents of the rag to be accurate, irrespective of the context. As always, note the word stricken..implies seconds from death etc, and the inclusion of a price tag...invariably the same with the value of a house when reporting about an accused.
However, with the above, seemingly, an aborted take-off has now become....an emergency landing !....which also leads to further confusion as to the facts, albeit common place in any Mail article.
If, after the abort, inspection revealed a damaged wheel assy, no drama and they do carry a spare...so far, so normal..but then, it seems, a second wheel assy. was also found to be damaged....again, hardly unknown after an aborted T/O.
Thereafter comes the intriguing bit. I find it hard to believe that no spares pooling agreements are in place..these are basic operational practices in the airline world after all, and, whilst the Voyager is being operated by the R.A.F, in one sense it remains a commercial aircraft.
Which leads to the possibility that, due to the fact of whom the operator is, i.e. Mil, there may well have been a reticence shall we say, on the part of airlines to loan a spare wheel assy.
No doubt the facts may well emerge in time, obviously not in the Mail, but as always, you can't help thinking there is an entirely different and hence factual account of what happened and why.
It's easy to slam the blame on the M.o,D / Air Tanker,,and you might as well include next doors cat for that matter, but would it not be prudent to wait a short while, rather than react to a Mail article that is, lets face it, designed to produce as much moral outrage as possible.....seems to have worked as well given some of the responses on here.