They flew a number of Agusta A109 painted in civilian colour schemes although they did carry UK military serials (you just needed to look extremely carefully at the right place to see them). The first two were ex Argentinian war prizes brought back from the Falklands.

I don’t know whether the fuselage of G-ARAY still exists. It lay around Lasham for a while after it was dismantled and I have a memory that it went somewhere for no destructive training, maybe with a Fire Brigade?

I know it is a service contract, which is why I specifically said 24 helicopters that we are not going to own.

All these are very valid points but I come back to the bottom line – the price.

Seven BILLION pounds for 24 helicopters that we are not going to own. No wonder the economy is going down the drain and I’ve just read the government is going to sell of the high speed rail link HS1 that cost £5 billion for one and a half billion.

Madness

Perhaps they were actually thinking of a ‘special’ King Air and a DA42, like one of the assorted spooky King Airs nominally based at Waddington and one of the DA42 working out of Boscombe Down?

None. It was a service contract. We would pay someone to provide the service for a certain length of time. The price includes not only the cost to them of providing the helicopters, but all running costs, pay, etc.

But £7Bn? Don’t you find that absolutely ludicrious?

I would assume for that sort of money hundreds of helicopters were involved.

No, the vid in question does depict a drug runner. Almost made it across the border. Very tough action to take, although there were plenty of warnings giving opportunities for an escort back. I guess they don’t have non-lethal stun-guns up there. It was a bad day to be playing poker though, no doubt. But it’s a pretty brutal and likely endless way to conduct a multi-pronged counter-narc policy, as I see it at least.

I think it was a Cessna 310 or 400 series that was in the clip

Excellent, the Caravelles at Turnhouse bring back many memories of my junior spotter days standing on the viewing deck at the old terminal

*sobs*