Mail: "Top Military Brass 'Use Helicopters Like Taxis'"

Top brass use helicopters like taxis: Admiral flies to a meeting and it costs £659 | Mail Online

 

And this is something new!!!!!!!!


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Another Wail story full of ignorance. I suppose the the very senior officers and their immediate staff could spend half the day in traffic or likewise going nowhere on a train and miss appointments rather than take a Service helicopter which would be flying anyway.

Jock Stirrup's helo flight (from London?) to Shrivenham is cheaper than a taxi. For 5, a taxi from central London to Shrivenham is cheaper than tube, standard rail and bus.

I hardly think that admirals or anyone else other than pilots 'enjoys' flying by helicopter. Noisy scary bouncy hoop loosening carts that they are. I'd rather walk.

 

Does anyone actually believe anything that is published in the Mail?

SF

 

"Reader comments are currently unavailable". Presumably because they realised people aren't willing to jump on the outrage bus.

Perhaps as Paul Dacre sits in his chauffeured car counting his comfortably greater than £1m salary he might wonder why he deserves such perks and maybe the same criteria apply to the leaders of the armed forces...

 

As Waspie said Nothing New...........:laughing2: The Correct term for all to use in your flying log, when flying the top brass is SOTAX........ Senior officers Taxi.... Loads in mine:angel7:

 

If not a SOTAX then the sortie will be programmed into a standard training sortie.

The problem is some fugwits will believe all things written in tabloids!!!!

 

Yet another misleading article pandering to the resentful 'underprivileged lions led by overprivileged donkeys' lobby.

At £234k, the quoted quarterly travel bills of the seven topmost officers in the Armed Forces total around a quarter the cost of a single Tomahawk cruise missile or just over three rate book hours in the air for a Typhoon, i.e. enough to reach the Libyan coast from Italy and return. Much of the helicopter flying time would have been used for training flights anyway.

"Lavish perks"? The diaries of these most senior of officers are overflowing with meetings and working visits to ships and units under their command all around the world. They even give up most of their evenings and weekends for official commitments or travel. The taxpayer doesn't give them huge responsibility and then pay them relatively big bucks to waste most of their time sat behind the wheel in traffic or queuing for tickets.

I'm surprised the Mail article didn't mention 'Top Brass' somewhere. (Oh, it did. )

 

I had a RAF VC10 take me on 17 days leave I wonder how much that cost?

 

Yup. Me too, Gib to Lyneham. Indulgence flight on a DH Comet, 1965. Used to fly every Tuesday, "Indulgence Flight. I think I paid a couple of quid for, again I think, Insurance. Oh, and I was an A/B at the time, so wasteful funds go from top to bottom. Daily Wail would have us all travelling by bicycle if they could.:-D

 

Washington to Brize and back. If they had given me the mones I could have had an ace time there, some did, but it was cheaper for me to go home.

Did Lyneham to Florida via Ganda and back via St Johns but that was to work not hollidays

 

Aircrew have to keep their flying hours up to date. Whether this is done in the form of an exercise or a taxi service does not matter. Flying hours have to be logged.

 

You can get quite a few golf bags, trollies and overnight bags in the back of a Seaking.

 

Heron for me!!! Lossie to Speke Airport, managed to get my tot in before, take off ,and in my local by 14OOHRS on the draught DD with my civvy oppos. Only drawback ?? the local talent seeing me in uniform!!!! for the first time ever.

 

In general this is utter, as usual, poorly researched bollox. Having spent the last 14months in an outer office and having numerous times tried to get a helo/FW tasking without any success I know just how difficult it is and the loopholes you have to jump through,

I know you can use them, I know you essentially use up spare capacity but I know its incredibly difficult to get your timelines to meet with the potential availability that the taskers might have.

As other posters have said, "IF" you get a successful tasking it's great. These Senior players work ludicrous hours and work as they travel. If you can make their day more productive so be it.

 

Personally I'd rather the well paid senior officer spent his day doing the job we paid him to do and not sitting in traffic, but thats probably me being boring

Also, having personally seen a 3* comment on his having to plead to a 4* for approval to fly on a £150 air fare for concerns about the travel cost, I doubt they get helo travel easily.

 

All i
I can say is, FODM!

 

It could be worse - you could have "Top brass use taxis like helicopters" - sorry, can't hang around just getting my coat.

 

You mean they drop their kebabs in the footwell and then throw up across the back seat..

 

Which is more secure? an armoured limo available to the top Brass for meetings[which will soon cover it's cost]or a low flying Helo that everyone will know where it's heading and should be at risk from fire from the ground taking out top brass?
I don't know if any one has the weapons to bring down a Helo in this country but they will.
Should have thought that the armoured car was safer but that's just a guess.