Royal helicopters and William

[FancyBiscuitsLevel]

So, not seen any threads on this - the story broke at the start of the week that the two new helicopters the RF took ownership of at the start of last year have already flown the distance of twice round the world. Anne is the biggest user and the explanation has been to allow multiple engagements on the same day and to allow secure access to more remote locations.

But in that, there was a detail about Prince William, last year he took the helicopter 52 times between Kensington palace and their new windsor home. Now, this is only about an 1 hour drive. There are regular train services between central London and Windsor. While the headline focus has been on the multiple uses for engagements on the same day by Anne (which to be clear I don’t begrudge if that’s the only practical way to do it), this travelling between your two homes that aren’t that far apart by helicopter feels excessive for someone who’s work is supposed to be focussed on the environment.

Of course they are used by ALL the Royal Family (I've already talked about Anne living in Gloucestershire, hence her useage) but William uses them a lot to go from Windsor to KP.

Not sure why you are being so aggressive with an opinion that differs to yours.

Perhaps you can tell me why G-XXEF as a registration is so important. It's passed me by.

He's been POW for 2 years. He's had to deal with family illness and to essentially run a huge corporation in that time. Im not a lawyer but I doubt he could have sat down in 2023 and ripped up all the contracts, told non- profits never to pay rent again, and everyone else to pay a lot less.

He's been PoW for getting on for three and a half years.

He may or may not be able to rip up existing contracts. We don't know. He's notoriously secretive. What we do know is he's hired top managers and investment advisors to oversee his 'corporation' (why doesn't it pay corporation tax?) and spends plenty of time micro-managing it.

We know he suggested waiving rents for tenants (very much doubt he was entirely serious) and made an unfunny joke about there being 'a lot of sweaty faces round the table' but the actuality is he waived £10k a year rent only after his greedy grifting was publicly exposed by Dispatches and The Sunday Times.

We also know he's found the time to sign lucrative mineral mining deals despite all his posturing over the environment.

He can and does find the time to shake up the things he wants to.

@simpsonthecat

I think maybe we're now finally sort of on the same page - the two Augustas are Royal Flight assets - that's the relevance of the registration of the aircraft Anne used..it allows anyone interested to do their actually do their own fact checking if so minded.

There may well be a worthwhile debate to be had
about the Royal Family's use of helicopters but this thread is displaying target fixation on William's use seemingly based on not much more than a few images in the media.

If you want informed debate you'd need to get hold of the breakdown of flying hours or sectors per Royal per annum....

Which is why I read the normally Royalist Telegraph article which is not too enamoured with the helicopter useage.

Of course I knew it wasn't William's private helicopter bet he would like it to be so I was just commenting on his useage in a flippant way!

If you are able to get a breakdown of the number of flying hours per royal, I'd be dead interested, although the Telegraph makes a stab at it

@simpsonthecat

If you are able to get a breakdown of the number of flying hours per royal, I'd be dead interested, although the Telegraph makes a stab at it

Probably a case of life is too short..🤔

I wouldn't mind betting the detailed stats are hidden..You could probably make a rough guess at it by seeing which royal went where, when and most importantly how on every day of the year😬 - probably what the Telegraph and I think what some other outlets have tried to.

He may or may not be able to rip up existing contracts. We don't know

Yes we do! It is a very rare contract that can be terminated at will, and if it is, the party that has that right will have had to pay over the odds to the other party to be willing to take on that uncertainty. The starting point of any contract is that both parties have certainty over what will happen over its term.

There’s a fairly obvious national security justification for not disclosing that information though!! Anything that might cause usage to be predicted would be strictly contained. In the same way that drivers vary the routes they take when making journeys.

Yep I know.

In years gone by anyone could pick up a copy the UK airspace navigation warnings and see pretty much which royal was going exactly where, via which route and almost when to the minute on the day..as the threat has changed so has that system.

If you look at the ADS tracking sites (e.g Flightradar) you may well find at least some of the flight history for relevant aircraft in the Kings Flight may be suppressed, or at least some info redacted. I'm not sure about aircraft track's themselves whilst a flight is in progress ..might have a look sometime.

TBF I should point out it's not just the Royals that do the latter, a lot of the bizjet community don't want movements logging - you can potentially extract a lot of intelligence from watching the comings and goings of some private flights.

Yes, a bit like not disclosing how much is spent on security for the royal family because it's a security issue.
How convenient. And yes, I have read all the reasons why.

This article explains it.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/nov/09/royal-security-cost-guardian-freedom-of-information-tribunal

And yet a quick Google offers guidelines to end contracts legally with various termination clauses that presumably the expert lawyers acting on the Duchy's behalf will have inserted as a matter of course.

I doubt any financial penalties would bother billionaire W in the slightest either in setting up a contract or terminating it.

As an American, I'm confused as to why non-profits are not expected to pay market value when they rent. It must be cultural.

They probably would be, on another thread.

Yes, there are various termination clauses you can insert into the contract if - and this is the important bit - the other party agrees to it. If they don’t, it doesn’t matter how many precedent clauses you have up your sleeve. And you can’t insert one after the event, either.

Contracts between commercial parties are negotiated - in other words, agreed, between the parties. Say you are a charity, or a business - you don’t just get given a document and sign on the dotted line. You start by agreeing the key terms and then progress to the small print. The final document, when signed will generally have gone through several versions a each party pushes for changes, and agrees to compromise.

If you are leasing premises from which to run your business, certainty over the term of the lease is normally a key concern. If you think you have a lease for say, 10 years, having to change premises unexpectedly will be expensive and involve lots of administrative costs. So you are unlikely to agree to a lease which allows your landlord to cancel it whenever they fancy. If they do insist on that, the landlord will have to face compromise elsewhere - a tenant is unlikely to agree to paying for substantial repairs or example if there’ a chance they’ll have to incur the expense of moving out at short notice.

“Expert lawyers” won’t use google, they will know from their experience that negotiating a contract involves some give and take.

The Duchy breaching contractual rights at will is also not behaviour that would go down well with its trustees (generally against their duties) or its government overseers either.

Yes, there are various termination clauses you can insert into the contract if - and this is the important bit - the other party agrees to it. If they don’t, it doesn’t matter how many precedent clauses you have up your sleeve. And you can’t insert one after the event, either.

Well as we don't have sight of the terms of any contracts we can't know if other parties to them have agreed to termination clauses and therefore we can't say for certain W doesn't have the right to rip them up which is what I said originally and you disagreed with.

What we do know however is that while he has trumpeted the ripping up of various grass roots contracts to the staggering value of £10k a year he has (naturally) failed to rip up the rapacious contract committing the MoJ to pay him £1.5m a year from public funds to lease an empty prison.

They would be if they were renting from a charity. In fact the trustees would be failing in their fiduciary duty not to charge a market rate without very good reason.

The same may be true of the Duchies, which generate funds both for private purposes and for good causes.

I think we can say for certain that you have very little understanding of how commercial contracts work, CathyorClaire, but have strong opinions about how you imagine they must work, nonetheless!

I'm not sure which good causes are having funds generated for them but if that's the case funds are apparently being generated from ripping off other good causes 🙃

If. as is so often claimed, Duchy trustees are obliged to charge the kind of 'market rents' the royals themselves are so reluctant to pay there is nothing to stop the recipients voluntarily returning the proceeds netted to the contributing bodies or the public purse.

I think we can now say for certain you can't prove my 'imagination' wrong much as you might like to.

I’m worried you’re going to pull something with all that reaching…

Please expound on the 'reaching' 🙂

If as is so often claimed, Duchy trustees are obliged to charge the kind of 'market rents' the royals themselves are so reluctant to pay there is nothing to stop the recipients voluntarily returning the proceeds netted to the contributing bodies or the public purse

We can't be having that surely, William's Duchy payout might dip slightly, he wouldn't like that!

Is William actually flying the helicopter himself on these short trips? I assume he's just keeping up his flying log to hold on to his licence which I think is fair given the work he put in to get it, and the contribution he made whilst flying SAR and HEMS.

I don't have any time for the royal family but the HEMS pilots are incredible, as a paramedic I've done some horrible jobs alongside HEMS crews where the pilots have really stepped up to assist us in our role when there have been too many patients and too few paramedics. I think he is entitled to maintain his licence.

There was a bit of a discusion about this early in the thread.

The conclusion I think was he had certainly claimed he was keeping his hand in.

Whether that actually translates into keeping his licence active/valid with a current rating on the new'ish type the King's Flight has, don't know.

Probably the closest we could get to proof that he is fully rated and current is an image of him flying one of the AW139s single pilot.

You are spot on. Non-profits paying market rent on Duchy property is not the real issue. Any property owner is free to charge market rent on property they own.

The real issue is that the Duchy’s/KCIII/PoW should be taxed correctly. This would bring them in line with other businesses that own property and rent/lease them.

However, KCIII and PoW would then be entitled to use legal tax avoidance measures.

Has anyone seen this Royal Albert Hall video of Will and Kate?

He is well ahead of her, not walking with her until the cameras are in view just as they enter!

https://www.reddit.com/r/RoyaltyTea/comments/1qc3tvq/prince_william_and_kate_enter_royal_albert_hall/