Thursday, July 26, 2012

Air Harper

Ugh. Harper wants his Air Force One. But here's the thing: The United States has a fleet of presidential and executive aircraft specifically designed and equipped to fly their high ranking states-people around the world and their country. Air Force One, the heavily customised Boeing 747 airframe is the signature contraption of the bunch. The RCAF maintains a fleet of Challenger and Airbus aircraft that perform a number of roles depending on their configuration, only one of which is prime-ministerial transport. They also move the Queen and other members of the Royal Family, troops and equipment as well as perform air-to-air refueling of Canadian and allied aircraft. It isn't Harper's Airbus. It is an asset of the RCAF, owned by the public, which may actually be needed in a real-world emergency. This isn't a new issue and Airshow in the past did the right thing and rebuffed the PMO about the paint-scheme. The dark-grey colour and low-visibility markings serve a tactical purpose when the jet flies into war-zones or other places where it might be unwise to advertise its presence on a ramp. I mean thanks to policy errors like Afghanistan and uncritically siding with Israel, there are a growing number of places on the globe where a big red maple leaf and Canada sticker might present a bit of a security problem.

What Harper wants is a flying photo-op backdrop to serve as nothing more than an officialised RCAF fishing charter.

3 comments:

Beijing York said...

Soon he'll need to commandeer a Hercules airplane to carry all his security detail, growing larger by the day it seems.

I'm starting to regret that Harper didn't stage a flyboy photo-op on a frigate off the coast of Esquimault with a huge banner reading "mission accomplished" after the Libya carpet bombing sortie. Think of the fun photo choppers could have had.

Alison said...

Lets get him a nice little Bombardier executive jet, stick a nice big maple leaf on it and let him fly off to Afghanistan. With any luck we won't see him again.

Alison said...

BY : ;-)