Now Air Miles Sophie gets in on the act with 3helicopterflights
HER husband has already been dubbed ‘Air Miles Eddie’ for his extravagant travel arrangements.
Now Sophie, Countess of Wessex has saddled the taxpayer with an estimated bill of £3,000 by taking three trips by helicopter to travel a total of only 87 miles.
The flights on Tuesday came barely hours before accounts showed that Royal travel cost the public £4.7million last year.
Sophie’s jaunts began from Kensington Palace, where she went after attending an NSPCC fundraising event in exclusive private member’s club Annabel’s in Berkeley Square.
She was driven from the West London residence to a waiting Sikorsky S76C for the 22-mile journey to Harlow in Essex.
The helicopter landed 11 minutes later on a playing field, where a Range Rover was waiting to drive her just over half a mile to the town’s Playhouse Theatre.
There, she watched a performance by the Razed Roof Theatre Group before heading back to the helicopter, clutching a bunch of flowers she had been given.
They were hardly likely to wilt during the next stage of her trip, a 14-mile flight to a field near the village of Ingatestone that took just six minutes.
From there, she was driven to the Remus Memorial Horse Sanctuary at nearby Buttsbury, which is celebrating its 35th anniversary. Sophie, a horse lover, has been a patron of the charity since 2013. After a tour of the facilities and a brief lunch, she returned to the helicopter for the 51-mile journey home to Bagshot Park in Surrey, landing 23 minutes later.
According to the AA Route Planner, it would have taken just over three hours for Sophie to have been driven to both engagements and then home, a total distance of 121 miles by the fastest roads.
The Countess of Wessex carried out 218 engagements in the UK and overseas last year, while Prince Harry carried out 209 and Prince William had 171.
Last week’s Royal Household accounts showed that £1.8million was spent on helicopter rides in the past financial year.
Norman Baker, a former Liberal Democrat Minister who still sits on the Privy Council which advises the Queen, said: ‘The continual use of helicopters by members of the Royal Family for relatively short flights is outrageous.’
Mr Baker said that such flights were ‘completely unnecessary’ and ‘the equivalent of sticking up two fingers to the taxpayer’.
A Buckingham Palace spokeswoman said members of the Royal Family were ‘allocated whatever transport is deemed the most appropriate’ for engagements.