Just a question are two regarding those navy personnel and the aircraft involved…?

Watching BBC News 24 yesterday and their live coverage, they reported that the crew were returning from Tehran on BA (can’t recall flight number) and that it was a British Airways flight. Now surely G-MEDL belongs to B-Med and is now BMI owned, I am correct ? So is it technically a BA flight or like other BA franchisees, is it a “B-Med flight operated on behalf of BA” ?

And the other thing… my military aviation knowledge isn’t what it once was, but shouldn’t those helos be described as ‘Commandos’ as opposed to ‘Sea Kings’ ? I thought the Sea King designation applied to the SAR variant with floatation sponsons housing the main gear and a rear or nose mounted radar dome ?

Whereas the ‘Commando’ was more of a personnel carrier, or does this designation only apply to the army version…?

I dont know much at all about helos, but Ive always called a helicopter that looked like that, a Sea King.

Ive just looked on airliners.net and on there the type of helicopter that I saw is classed as a Westland Sea King HC4. So other than that, I dont know.

lol, talk about being on the same wavelength! you didnt happen to photograph a Virgin A340-600 at approximately 3:30 pm did you?

Sam

Probably, but I realised late afternoon that the time on my camera was incorrect, so I don’t don’t know when photos were actually taken until I sorted the problem at 5pm something. If there is any way you could get hold of the reg number, then I should be able to help

The two Sea Kings arriving at the airport:

and the 15 Sailors about to touchdown on British soil, G-MEDL, landing 27L:

more photos to come later once I have edited them…:)

(nice) CC welcome – I still find that I get slightly over exposed photos, even with a bit of exposure compensation applied in camera…