Message posted by kegdr (Member since 02/08/2023) on July 15, 2023 at 16:55:11 PST:
AirTanker is a bit of a different deal. They're not a private aerial refueling company as such, they're a consortium that owns the Voyager fleet on behalf of the Royal Air Force. The Voyagers themselves are operated solely by Royal Air Force crews, and are military assets. There is a surge fleet comprising civilian spec A330-243s which can be used to supplement military transport needs or be leased out to the civilian market. These are operated by AirTanker except if wet leased to another operator. Every airframe has an assigned civilian registration and military serial, although only one is active at any time, and the airframes occasionally move between the two fleets and either have the AAR and military kit added or removed depending which way it's going. An example of this is ZZ336, well known as the designated VIP Voyager - for many years this flew with AirTanker as G-VYGG, but G-VYGG was stricken from the civilian register in 2015 when the aircraft was moved from the surge fleet to the core military fleet. Hence there's three designations of A330 involved: A330-243 - civil spec
Voyager KC2 - military spec, with wing AAR pods
Voyager KC3 - military spec, with wing AAR pods and a fuselage mounted drogue unit
In Reply to: Re: Private takers for refueling posted by Pimau5 on July 14, 2023 at 6:12:10 PST:
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