That's It?
Posted:
Thu Feb 10, 2005 4:34 pmby ScorpiŠ¾n
LONDON (Reuters) - A British army pilot has been disciplined by senior officers for using a tank-busting helicopter to deliver a pizza to his girlfriend.
The pilot, based with 659 Army Air Corps squadron in Suffolk, was on a map-reading training drill when he dropped off the pizza to his girlfriend who was taking part in an exercise 30 miles (50 km) away.
The 25-year-old lieutenant had picked up the takeaway before setting out on the sortie in his Lynx helicopter, the Sun newspaper reported on Tuesday. He was reprimanded but did not have his pilot's licence taken away, the paper added.
"The opportunity to add a light-hearted element to the planned sortie was taken but with no detriment to the sortie objective," a Ministry of Defence spokeswoman told Reuters.
"The chain of command do not condone these actions and have disciplined the individuals concerned."
Just one helicopter? I thought it was
love!
Re: That's It?
Posted:
Thu Feb 10, 2005 4:39 pmby Craig.
YES i was right, it was a Lynx. OK so now that pointless bit of info is out of the way. I bet he gets gate gaurding duty for a month:)
Re: That's It?
Posted:
Thu Feb 10, 2005 4:40 pmby Felix/FFDS
I would hope that the "senior" officers reprimanded him in a manner such as "Don't get caught doing that again! Be more discrete!".
I have to admit, incidents like that make me appreciate that these young men, for all their high-tech training, are nonetheless high-strung kids. Face it, who among us wouldn't just love to pop in on a loved one like that!
Re: That's It?
Posted:
Thu Feb 10, 2005 4:44 pmby Hagar
If it was down to me I would promote him for initiative.
PS. I thought most of the AAC aircrew were NCOs.
~
Posted:
Thu Feb 10, 2005 4:44 pmby ScorpiŠ¾n
The idea of dive bombing with cargo capsules in place of bombs is a bit titillating. I s'pose the pizza might not be in perfect condition tho'.
Re: That's It?
Posted:
Thu Feb 10, 2005 5:36 pmby beaky
Not to be a wet blanket, but you have to consider his CO's position. Imagine how different this would all look if something had gone wrong... as far as the top brass and the taxpayers would be concerned, the cause of the accident would be: a failure to command this pilot. Regardless of what actually went wrong. Acrash on a sortie being done by the numbers- acceptable (to a point). But a crash while "horsing around"- chaos in the ranks! But I hope he at least winked when he doled out the punishment...
Re: That's It?
Posted:
Thu Feb 10, 2005 5:44 pmby Craig.
i still think there are much better uses of a helicopter with tank busting missiles on board. The M25 was just down the road, a clean up of that car park would have been acceptable.
