Manchester

Photo of the Day 5th July 2025.

mancavgeek

05 Jul 2025 • 2 min read

G-BRVH, Smyth Model S Sidewinder, parked on grass at Manchester Barton, some time after October 1995.

On This Day 5th July 1992.

Side view of a twin-engined jet airliner parked facing to the right. The plane is mostly white, with blue "ATI" titles on the forward fuselage, and a dark blue stripe running along the body, covering the passenger cabin windows. The tail has a dark blue chevron with a light blue triangle in the middle. The engines mounted on the sides of the rear fuselage are grey, with "Super 80" text in black. Grey concrete apron fills the foreground, with a strip of red right at the bottom, while grass in the background runs out to trees in the distance. The tail of a white jet airliner can be seen immediately behind this plane. Grey sky fills the rest of the frame.

I-DAVZ, McDonnell Douglas MD-82, ATI, unloading bags on stand at Manchester Airport, 5th July 1992.

I think that is a British Aerospace 146 parked just behind it.

On This Day 5th July 2018.

Side view of a twin engined jet aircraft moving slowly from right to left as it starts it's take-off roll. The plane is almost entirely white, with billboard-style red "Jet2" titles on the front fuselage, smaller "Friendly Low Fares" additional text on the upper fuselage over the wings, and red "Jet2.com" titles diagonally on the tail, and in a small form at the front of the engine cowling under the wings. The up-turned wing-tips are red, with white "Jet2.com" titles. Hot, dry weather has left the green grass lining the sides of the runway in the foreground looking more yellow, even brown in places, with a black metal fence topped with rolls of razor-wire at the bottom of the frame. More grass in the background leads up to large grey hangars in the background, under the plane's tail, with blue sky filling the rest of the frame.

G-VYGL, Airbus A330-243, Jet2, lining up on Runway 23 left at Manchester Airport, 5th July 2018, as seen from one of the South Side mounds.

Strap in, this is going to get complicated/interesting **delete as appropriate**

This plane is owned and operated by Air Tanker, a privately owned company, ostensibly on behalf of the Royal Air Force, and is a standard A330-243 that has been modified to an MRTT (Multi-Role Tanker Transport) for military use, as an Airbus Voyager KC2.

Essentially, this can fly hundreds of troops and their personal effects thousands of miles, while also refuelling several other planes en route.

Thing is, it is essentially surplus to requirements in peace-time.

So, rather than leave it gathering dust until it is needed, it has been converted back to a sort-of-standard A330-243 (the plumbing in the outer wing sections for the refueling pods is still there, and the wing-box has been beefed up, among other things), and leased to Jet2 annually for the summer season.

This explains the non-standeard Jet2 livery, which can be removed in minutes.

The flight deck crews are provided by Air Tanker, which means that they are getting plenty of hours in, and the lease is at slightly below market rates, on the proviso that, should it be needed, it can be requisitioned and put back into military service with little to no notice.

I can hear some of the Americans screaming "That's an illegal state subsidy!", in which case I would like to point them to the Civil Reserve Air Fleet, which operates in a similar but totally opposite way - the American military places a retainer on civilian airliners, on the proviso that the airlines turn them over at a moments notice, but this has only rarely happened (I believe only 3 times, all because of a requirement for operations in the Middle East), so the airlines are geting money effectively for doing nothing.

Which seems like a subsidy to me!

Anyhoo, yeah, most people flying on this plane won't realise it is actually a military aircraft.