Quite extraordinary to have three helicopter pilots in one family. Harry flew Apaches, Wills flew air rescue and currently flies a medevac helicopter. Andrew flies helicopters and fought in the Falklands war.
Does the royal family have a personal helicopter for them to jaunt around in?
Separate of course from a official military helicopter assigned to the Queen.
The Queen’s Helicopter Flight is a division of the Royal Household, and it operates a single helicopter which is dedicated solely to royal use. It’s supplemented as required with private helicopter charter.
I’s supposed to be for official travel, and details of flights and costs are publicly reported, so I think the opportunity for family members to use it to “jaunt around in” are limited.
There’s nothing to stop any member of the royal family from buying or leasing a helicopter privately, and using it at their own expense, and I dare say that they have the money to do that if they want to.
Yes, I assumed the official helicopter was only for royal business.
I didn’t know if the family had purchased smaller, personal helicopters. They have the money and three trained family members. But I’ve never heard anything reported if they do fly (other than during their military service).
I have to say that not many people buy helicopters for frolics. Anyone I know who owns a helicopter uses it for their work. Any frolicking is purely incidental. If all you want it for is the occasional frolic it makes much more sense just to rent one as required.
Plus, the three people you mention learned to pilot helicopters as part of their jobs. This doesn’t mean that they are so passionate about flying helicopters that the job just doesn’t give them enough time in the air. Do bus drivers buy buses to drive around at weekends?
I had a relative that flew during the Viet Nam war. He missed flying a lot after leaving the military. He often talked about his flying days. But he never had the funds to charter a plane or even dream of buying and maintaining one. Pilots have to fly regularly or their skills quickly diminish.
A private plane or helicopter can be big time savers over driving the crowded highways. It might even be safer for the Royals than driving. Cars can be intercepted and stopped on the road much easier than a plane or helicopter in the air.
There was a story last year about the Queen supposedly giving William a helicopter for his birthday. This turned out to be a gross distortion of the facts by a few irresponsible media. In reality the royal household had taken a lease on a helicopter for official use in preference to the series of charters they had been doing in the past. If William or any of the others are certified to fly the Agusta Westland A109S I suppose they might do so, but it’s not anyone’s personal toy.
Helicopters are considered pretty unsafe. That may be unfair, but I believe that the Queen dislikes them and uses them only as a last resort. They also have a rule that she and Charles never travel in one together.
Cite? Quite a broad brush I think. I flew helicopters five years in the Army, we never had an incident. One of our guys was however killed by a drunk driver.
Trivial factoid: the Queen Mother liked travelling by helicopter, and famously said her life had been changed by a chopper, much as Anne Boleyn’s had. This might have something to do with the Queen’s reluctance…
Yeah, helicopters are expensive to buy, and even more so to actually run. ISTR that when I worked at Eurocopter, someone told me that the actual cost to run the helicopter combined with all the required maintenance is what really dings most operators financially- the actual purchase price of the aircraft is chump change in comparison.