Oh dear, an overly-defensive response from HQ Air M&C.
The Daily Mail reports that a 'row' over replacing a punctured tyre on an RAF Voyager caused by a bird strike as the aircraft was taking off led to military personnel on their way home from Afghanistan being delayed for 48 hours at a Middle East airport.
The Mail claims that a replacement tyre could not be sourced locally as this would breach a private finance deal and that under the terms of the contract both a new tyre and engineers to fit it had to be flown out from the UK.
These statements are factually incorrect...
The majority of the first statement is entirely correct; M&C must have been so shocked by this comparitive accuracy (coming from the Mail) that they had to resort to a cheap spin trick by hanging the reference to "a row" on it so they could say it was incorrect. Sounds like more PPRuNe grammar triv, but what it actually is is an attempt to bluster away an embarrassing story of which the essence has (unbelievably) been accurately reported by the Mail. Recovering somewhat from that shock, it does the MOD no favours to come out with tripe like
Sourcing replacement parts, including tyres, from the local area is not as straightforward as it may appear and it was not possible to use a tyre from a nearby commercial airport.
without any further rebuttal, because anyone with the slightest bit of nous about them would immediately ask WHY?
This
major engineering organisation less than 20 miles away would have a significant quantity of A330 wheels on hand - and given the friendly nature of UK-UAE relations, it would have been very straightforward for the UAE government to provide a suitable cloak into which to supply the part to avoid embarrassing the airline. We take fuel from civilian airports in the Gulf, do we not - this is standard business for Defence Attache staff. Airbridge operations through Minhad are not secret; if OPSEC is wheeled out as a reason then we really are going mad. One presumes that food and water for the Minhad staff are locally sourced; why not commercially-available aircraft parts?