RAF TriStar retirement

[Chris K]

I wondered if anyone could provide some information on the current retirement schedule for the RAF TriStars? As far as I'm aware, the final TriStar will be retired in late 2013.

Over the past few weeks I saw ZD948, ZD951, ZD952, ZD953, ZE704 and ZE706 at my home airport Hannover (HAJ/EDDV), so those seem to be pretty active right now.

As far as I know, ZD949 has been retired last year and is used for spares. ZD950 has been at Cambridge since last August and there are some rumours that she might be reduced to spares, too, although I was also told that she is just there for a C-Check. Maybe one of you guys from Brize can shed some light on this. What about ZE705? Haven't seen her around for a while now.

Thanks in advance for your answers,
Chris

[DangerMouse]

Hi Chris,

Unfortunately not close to the Tristar fleet at all, however I can tell you that there hasn't been much movement recently - seems to be a line of 4 Tristars on the flight line not doing much at all!

I think the fleet has been extended - I am 100% sure they will go into 2014 and possibly 2015.

The last I heard (it was a while back) they are definitely flying into 2014 - they are due to take over from VC10 detachments east of the UK (cough) this year at some point, and I'm certain that will carry on for a while yet - they wont be using Voyagers there any time soon, especially if the one at Brize is anything to go by.

[petet16]

Single point tanker to replace 3 point tanker, hmm, that should work ok

[Chris K]

Thank you for the information! A friend of mine here at EDDV is a really big fan of the RAF Tristars and he will be very pleased to hear that they will be around for a bit longer than expected.

Cheers,
Chris

[DangerMouse]

Single point tanker to replace 3 point tanker, hmm, that should work ok

What could possibly go wrong...!

Saying that, if the serviceability of their HDUs are anywhere near as bad as ours (they will be) then I can see a lot of problems coming out of the AAR situation in the east...

[Tonkenna]

I don't think you should write-off the Tristar...

It may be a "single-hose" tanker but the Tristar does have redundancy in the fact that it has 2 centre-line hoses! The Tristar has successfully held many AAR detachments over the years, the main reason it does less AAR at the moment is its AT commitments... It is a very capable Tanker.

[petet16]

Oh, don't get me wrong, the Tristar is a very capable tanker, and would have been even more so had the MoD fitted pylons as originally planned.