MoD Defends Prince's Chinook Middleton Field Landing
Defence officials have defended a helicopter landing made by Prince William in a field owned by the family of his girlfriend, Kate Middleton.
A statement was issued by the Ministry of Defence after the News of the World publication wrote of the flight, which was made in a Royal Air Force Chinook helicopter earlier this month.
The sortie, said officials, had received full authorisation to take place within the Prince's condensed RAF flight training programme. The Chinook, they added, was on the ground for a matter of seconds, and nobody entered or exited the helicopter during this time.
Training Flights
According to the News of the World, William's landing occurred during a two-hour long training flight that covered 100 miles. The flight began earlier at RAF Odiham in Hampshire, it said, and, owing to a lack of suitable landing areas in the county, the Prince requested permission to touchdown on the Middleton ground.
The same paper published quotes attributed to Jon Lake, an aviation writer, who referred to the flight as "ridiculous and inappropriate".
"This is an absolute waste of training hours on the Chinook helicopter that the military are hard-pressed to afford", Mr Lake was quoted as having said.
"No other pilot at Prince William's stage of training would be allowed anywhere near the left-hand seat of a Chinook."
Practice Landings
The MoD statement said that RAF helicopter pilots frequently made practice landings at non-airfield sites to train for possible future missions in Afghanistan or Iraq.
"Helicopter bases continually seek permission from land owners to use their fields and there are only two fields permanently available in Hampshire", it said, adding: "Opportunities to use alternatives are therefore regularly seized."
"The aircraft landed in the field, after taking all necessary safety precautions, and was on the ground for 20 seconds.
"No-one got on or off the aircraft. This was very much a routine training sortie that achieved essential training objectives."
RAF Wings
Prince William received his RAF wings in a ceremony held at RAF Cranwell on April 11th. Later that same day, he flew a Chinook to the Isle of Wight for Peter Phillip's stag party.
Source - Armed Forces International's Aviation Expert
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