Transport Aircraft

Not really, not with an election campaign 2 weeks away. Expect a whole slew of acquisition and capital investment announcements at photo ops coming to a town near you.

An fancy jet at that with its Defensive Aid Suite

Probably old news for most but was looking at the air corps video of the visit to RAF Lossiemouth  for the meeting about providing SAR support between both the Air Corps & RAF for the north atlantic were the air corps captain mentions the Transport Casa will be here in summer 2025!

The Sunday Times reports today on the costs of hiring in air transport for the Taoiseach over a six-month period. Obviously, the statement that the Learjet has been out of action since late 2023 is not accurate. (I was able to access although not a subscriber.)

https://www.thetimes.com/world/ireland-world/article/simon-harris-racks-up-bill-of-500k-on-private-jets-tg3wpvnqt

ah well, no doubt the same paper will be screaming about how much the replacement costs when it’s ordered in the next few weeks.

Yep, its a simple charter arrangement.

But its difficult to predict usage patterns for quiet times over the summer as against Paddys Day and the EU summits in the Spring.

And what if the charter provider had no planes available for an unforeseen trip? Embarrassing to say the least.

I take your point, but I'm much more a fan of the RAF dry lease arrangement with Titan for their liveried A321-200. I'd have gone for something like that, sized appropriately to our needs, before purchasing a new business jet outright.

We already have the PC-12s and soon to be 3 C-295s to cover that requirement.

The government has been using a fairly small chartered Citation jet, so something like a PC-24 on the fleet would be well used, but a long range BizJet of some type will still be needed.

Might as well do things properly for a change instead of looking for cheap solution. After all…It's another plane on the "Air Force" inventory.…

I think we can be reasonably certain it will be a European plane. My money remains on a Dassault Falcon 8X.

Hell of a video from 1977. If we could put something out along these lines….would do wonders for recruitment!

It's been in and out of Southampton a lot over the last 2 months…. once or twice a week a lot of the weeks

Found this from a few years back ,

Any idea why the dept of defence didn't snap them up ? It was a bargain , for a plane type we were already buying and training up for, hell if one was destined to be a hanger queen + only brought out if the other had a fault ,it'd still have been a bargain , or station one in Dublin airport,and taxi a crew up to it , for use when there was no tower staff available in baldonnel (being a bit daft I know )

https://www.thestory.ie/2022/11/10/department-of-defence-declined-cut-price-offer-to-buy-two-essentially-new-transport-aircraft-for-less-than-40-of-their-purchase-price/

Considering the C295 is an in-demand type, you'd wonder why no one has snapped this pair up already. Mind you, many of the 295s being delivered new from the factory are variants with customer-specific equipment etc. so maybe plain transports with no military equipment are not that attractive.

Its always good to have aircraft of the one type for training and stand in for when the other aircraft when they are in for services.

The casas are also good for operating out of rough air strips as well if needs be.

Yes, it would. At the moment. Crewing the current fleet is beyond the Air Corps numbers.

Yes the BN Defender is being retired, a DeHavilland Twin Otter Guardian is on order.