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Labour scraps £40m private helicopter service favoured by Rishi Sunak

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-helicopter-rishi-sunak-b2602220.html

Senior ministers set to travel in government-owned aircraft after ‘grossly wasteful’ contract axed

Labour scraps £40m private helicopter service favoured by Rishi Sunak

Senior ministers set to travel in government-owned aircraft after ‘grossly wasteful’ contract axed

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There is no justification in a country this size for them to be traveling by air at all unless it's an emergency where they're needed somewhere absolutely ASAP, or they need to travel directly from one end of the country to the other, which is almost never.

Just one more way in which those in power separate themselves from those they rule over.

catloaf

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Doesn't London have notoriously bad traffic? I can imagine that might be some justification.

CurlyWurlies4All

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It's got good trains.

tal

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In 2023, Mr Sunak reversed an initial decision to stop leasing the two Agusta Westland helicopters.

Senior ministers will instead use government-owned vehicles such as RAF helicopters when needed for operational reasons

It looks like these Sloane guys operate AgustaWestland 109E helicopters.

https://www.sloanehelicopters.com/flight-operations/32-squadron

So what are these RAF helicopters that will replace them?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_active_United_Kingdom_military_aircraft

They do have one category there of RAF helicopters for transport of government ministers

Leonardo AW109SP Used for transportation of senior military commanders or government ministers.[31]

I mean, that's...the next model of the same helicopter. Is that actually less-expensive?

Deceptichum

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Pretty sure the expensive part is hiring a 3rd party to do the job instead of themselves, not the operating costs of the vehicle.

partial_accumen

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I mean, that’s…the next model of the same helicopter. Is that actually less-expensive?

I would guess the government doesn't need to profit from buying flights from itself. A private company certainly isn't going to provide service without a percentage of profit on top charged to the government.

ZapBeebz_

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A "benefit" of using RAF helos is it the flight hours. Pilots typically need a certain number of flight hours every month to maintain their certs, so they'll likely be flying anyways. Having them fly senior ministers around instead of other training flights technically is free, as the flights were going to happen anyways.