RAF flight from Buenos Aires to Mount Pleasant

[Captivep]

Idly looking at FR24 whilst waiting for my wife to pick me up from the pub and it appears that there is currently a RAF Voyager (ZZ337) en route from EZE to MPN.

Have things changed since the submarine search or is this a glitch? Montevideo, perhaps?

[TEEEJ]

Idly looking at FR24 whilst waiting for my wife to pick me up from the pub and it appears that there is currently a RAF Voyager (ZZ337) en route from EZE to MPN.

Have things changed since the submarine search or is this a glitch? Montevideo, perhaps?

Mount Pleasant to Buenos Aires

https://www.flightradar24.com/data/aircraft/zz337#fc28edc

Buenos Aires to Mount Pleasant

https://www.flightradar24.com/data/aircraft/zz337#fc32511

[DaveReidUK]

Idly looking at FR24 whilst waiting for my wife to pick me up from the pub and it appears that there is currently a RAF Voyager (ZZ337) en route from EZE to MPN.

Have things changed since the submarine search or is this a glitch? Montevideo, perhaps?

Definitely Ezeiza.

It would be reasonable to expect that the UK has won some hearts in Argentina after the help we provided in the search for the sub, though sadly to no avail.

There were already signs of a thawing after Kirchner's departure and Brexit.

[Wycombe]

I've no inside knowledge (other than having been "down south" a few times some years ago), but if I was speculating, it could be that this might have been a medical evacuation from the Islands.

Rio was the place these went to when I was there, so if Buenos Aires is now available, it should be welcomed as a closer option.

In my time (before there was a 330 based down there), the medevacs were on the Herc, so its an improvement all round!

[TEEEJ]

A RAF Voyager transport, in a direct link from MPA in the Falkland Islands landed on Thursday morning at Ezeiza airport in Buenos Aires with 25 members of the HMS Protector crew, on time to catch a midday British Airways flight to London. It has been decades since an RAF unit lands in the Argentine capital international airport.

The event was underlined by the Argentine media and as happened in Comodoro Rivadavia when the HMS Protector was among the first to join in the search for the missing submarine ARA San Juan, they were welcomed with open arms and or applause.

In Ezeiza the RAF team and HMS Protector crew members were received by an officer from the Argentine Air Force and the Defence attaché from the British embassy.

Falklands/Buenos Aires Ezeiza airport direct flight by a RAF Voyager transport ? MercoPress (http://en.mercopress.com/2017/12/08/falklands-buenos-aires-ezeiza-airport-direct-flight-by-a-raf-voyager-transport)

[crewmeal]

There were already signs of a thawing after Kirchner's departure and Brexit.

Maybe Aerolineas Argentinas might look at a UK operation in the future.

[Heathrow Harry]

Could do with an FI link to BA really........

[chevvron]

Definitely Ezeiza.

It would be reasonable to expect that the UK has won some hearts in Argentina after the help we provided in the search for the sub, though sadly to no avail.

There were already signs of a thawing after Kirchner's departure and Brexit.

The average Argentinian is pretty friendly anyway.
On holiday in Rio in 2002, Mrs C and I were out on a boat on a day trip and got chatting to an Argentinian couple of about the same age as us. He was an accountant, she was a lawyer and they lived in a province quite a long way from Buenos Aires.
Their government weren't very high on their list of 'likes' mainly due to their handling of the economy. He told us that he, along with other accountants, had foreseen the financial trouble looming and had drawn all their assets out of the bank and stashed them away in their home. To this day, they still send us regular invites for us to visit them.

[Captivep]

Chevvron - agreed. When I was there about six years ago everybody was really friendly, both in BA and Ushuaia. Even though every little shop seemed to be selling loads of postcards claiming sovereignty over the Falklands not one person so much as mentioned it to us. There was certainly no animosity to us at all.

[Heathrow Harry]

Well why would ANYONE in Argentina want to live in the FI? They have plenty of similar country down south

I suspect if we hadn't got them back there'd be little difference there - an Argentinean Governor and some extremely bored squaddies and signs in Spanish & English and a once a week flight to BA instead of Santiago

[N707ZS]

Perhaps should have sent the BA 318s down there and flew to Santiago.

[Pegpilot]

Agree with your comments, Captivep, but having visited Ushuaia last year to join a boat to the Falklands and Antarctica, the big sign at the port gates insisting "No Anchorage to the British Pirates" was an indication that things hadn't been forgotten, as was the memorial to Argentina's war dead at Ushuaia airport. Oh, and a condition of Argentinian port access for our Russian flagged vessel was that an Argentine observer be carried on board to ensure that rules weren't transgressed. So the on board lecture on the history of the Falklands tactfully stopped at 1981. I was able to bring our colonial cousins up to speed on the 1982 war in the bar afterwards. I realised afterwards that I had stayed in the same Ushuaia hotel where Clarkson had his run-in with the locals.

[Captivep]

Pegpilot

It's odd, isn't it - Argentine officialdom seems to veer between two extremes.

When I was there the Pirates sign wasn't there (Or I didn't see it!), we didn't have an Argentine observer on the ship, and at the end of the trip we sailed direct from the Falklands to Buenos Aires and there was a friendly welcome (despite Falklands and British Antarctic Territory stamps in our passport).

I suspect most Argentines don't think about it too often and tune it out even though the TV weather forecasts always showed the forecast for Puerto Argentino (as they call it). I doubt anyone was watching on the islands!

[vctenderness]

The arguments over the Falklands really get me going. It is fact that the islands have never been inhabited by Argentina and that the British were there before Argentina became a nation.

Argentinians are themselves colonial immigrants from, mainly, Spain and Italy with a smattering of Third Reich ‘refugees’.

The fact that they are close to the Argentinian mainland is of no consequence. If it was then USA could claim Cuba, France could claim The Channel Islands, Saudi Arabia claim Bahrain and Norway the Faroes!

[Heathrow Harry]

I always point out to 'mericans that the FI have been British longer than Texas has been 'Merican....................

AS for Argentinians...

A Peruvian colleague described them as:-

" Italians who speak Spanish and think they are British........."

[Wycombe]

Argentinians are themselves colonial immigrants from, mainly, Spain and Italy with a smattering of Third Reich ‘refugees’.


Not forgetting the Welsh descendents also ;-)

[Captivep]

For those who are interested ZZ337 is currently, according to FR24, en route from MPN to EZE, whilst simultaneously descending towards Sao Paolo...

[Wycombe]

......indeed, just about to alight back at MPN, definitely from GRU.

Handy having a tanker down there that can double-up as a long haul airliner :-)