Posted on 09/09/2019 4:42:55 AM PDT by naturalman1975
Prime Minister Scott Morrison has given his official aircraft a brand new name after the jet received a $250million taxpayer-funded upgrade.
Named 'Shark One' after his beloved NRL team the Cronulla Sharks, the KC30-A tanker is a welcome improvement for the PM and his entourage and can now travel from Australia to Russia in a single voyage.
The plane is a previous Qantas and Jetstar commercial A330, which was bought in 2015 by Airbus and modified by Airbus into a freighter and air-to-air refueller.
Shark One has a customised interior, and can comfortably carry more than 100 passengers in a lie-flat configuration.
The Prime Minister's previous aircraft was a single-aisle Boeing 737-700 that had been used since John Howard's leadership, and would be used for both domestic and international flights.
The plane had the capacity for only 18 passengers, including two AFP Protection officers and three Air Force staff, leaving other ministers, journalists and officials to chase the PM's aircraft around the world using commercial airlines.
Now the press party can travel in style, with the aircraft capable of completing one-way flights from Canberra to Tel Aviv and Moscow.
Mr Morrison's maiden voyage in Shark One will be to the US on September 19, travelling to Washington and New York.
(Excerpt) Read more at dailymail.co.uk ...
Australian Prime Ministers used to travel commercially when leaving the country (normally on Qantas) but after John Howard was stranded in the United States on September 11, 2001, where all Qantas aircraft were included in the grounding of all commercial traffic, it was decided that as a matter of policy the future Prime Ministers would always be flown by the Royal Australian Air Force.
(Howard had been in the US for ceremonies relating to the fiftieth anniversary of the ANZUS alliance, and had been due to address a joint sitting of the US Congress on 12th September - obviously cancelled, although he sat in the visitors gallery that day observing President Bush's speech (he eventually did deliver his own speech to a joint sitting the following year. He returned to Australia on 12th September 2001 courtesy of the USAF aboard one of the VIP transports normally used as Air Force Two and during that flight, formally invoked the provisions of ANZUS for the first time - Each Party recognizes that an armed attack in the Pacific Area on any of the Parties would be dangerous to its own peace and safety and declares that it would act to meet the common danger in accordance with its constitutional processes... an armed attack on any of the Parties is deemed to include an armed attack on the metropolitan territory of any of the Parties...
I quite like this idea of having a VIP transport for the Prime Minister that can also be used by the RAAF as a tanker when needed for that purpose.
A 747 might be a bit pretentious however! ;-)
I’m not clear if it is staying that colour or going to be painted in the livery normally used by the VIP fleet here.
Oh thank God!
The plane is a previous Qantas and Jetstar commercial A330, which was bought in 2015 by Airbus and modified by Airbus into a freighter and air-to-air refueller.
...
$250 million seems like a lot of money for a used Airbus.
It’s bigger than anything we’ve used before - and the advantage is interoperability with the rest of the RAAF fleet and with the Qantas fleet as well (I haven’t checked but in the past Qantas has been involved in maintaining the RAAF’s large jet fleet).
The cost is in Australian dollars, so more like $170 million US, and it’s not just the airframe cost - this plane will have a lot of special features in terms of communications, etc - we’re not talking the same as something like Air Force One, but even a step or so down from that is still expensive hardware.
Yeah. Needs a paint job.
I hope the Prime Minister's aircraft will feature the lyrics of Waltzing Matilda on the side,it being the second greatest "national anthem" of all (after The Star Spangled Banner,of course).
Oh man, that’s a beauty. /s
Shark One has a customised interior, and can comfortably carry more than 100 passengers in a lie-flat configuration.
Now that is the way to carry the press...
I saw no interior shots. Maybe they just have web seats : )
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