Documents expose Prince William RAF training row: report Agence France-Presse

Published: Sunday November 9, 2008





Print This Email This LONDON (AFP)  Prince William's bosses in Britain's Royal Air Force (RAF) were unaware of full details of training flights which took him to a stag party and a wedding, the Sunday Telegraph reported.



Documents released to the newspaper under Britain's freedom of information laws state that officers would have cancelled the flights if they knew the prince was using them to get to private functions, it said.



The paper also reported that the five training flights on an RAF Chinook helicopter including the controversial sorties, originally exposed by a tabloid, cost the taxpayer 86,434 pounds (106,000 euros, 135,000 dollars).



The flights, which the paper said the prince himself planned, took place in April this year when he was on a four-month attachment with the RAF.



The attachment was designed to prepare for the day when William -- son of heir to the throne Prince Charles and the late princess Diana -- will be head of the armed forces as king.



The flights included a trip over his father's country house Highgrove in southwest England; practice landings in a field next to girlfriend Kate Middleton's family home; a trip to a wedding in northeast England; picking up his brother Prince Harry from London to take him to a stag do and "buzzing" the royal residence at Sandringham, eastern England, the paper said.



A royal spokesman told the Sunday Telegraph: "Prince William accepts that the sorties were naive and accepts his share of the responsibility for what happened."



A Ministry of Defence spokesman added: "All flights undertaken with Flying Officer Wales were legitimate training sorties.



"In retrospect, there was a degree of naivety involved in the planning of these sorties but there is no question anyone misled anyone."



The 26-year-old announced in September that he will now train as a search and rescue pilot, saying: "The time I spent with the RAF earlier this year made me realise how much I love flying."



