I smiled. Isn’t the king himself also a trained heli pilot?
I believe fixed wing, although rather average skills. He apparently took a govt jet off the end of the runway because neither of the real pilots on board wanted to take the controls from the heir to the throne.
He apparently took a govt jet off the end of the runway
To be fair it was, runway 13 & 31 confusion, then landing with tailwind with typical non-radar AFIS in Scottish airports, they have no clue from where you are inbound 
RHS should have been able to speak (he was not just subject of their Majesty)
MedEwok wrote:
Isn’t the king himself also a trained heli pilot?
Yes. He flew several fixed wing and rotary aircraft. For sure he did fly the Wessex Helo. Fixed wing, BAE146 and Andover, plus trainers and apparently the Jet Provost.
He was involved in a runway excursion at Islay on the BAE146 after which he decided to hang up flying.
Graham wrote:
He apparently took a govt jet off the end of the runway because neither of the real pilots on board wanted to take the controls from the heir to the throne.
He was flying 2nd in command. The tail wind component was 12 kts and they overshot the runway end. The airplane commander was held responsible as he should have called for an abort. Then Prince Charles decided to stop flying at this stage.
Correct.
“Oops, we’re not gonna make it, your controls.”
The only difference would have been the headlines:
“Senior air force member at controls during prince’s jet crash.”
Peter wrote:
They would have expected, probably correctly, that taking control would have been a career terminating move.
I doubt it. In fact, I would think that going around and do it again properly would have defused the situation.
Many years ago I knew an ex RAF pilot closely familiar with the situation and that was not his view.
Peter wrote:
Many years ago I knew an ex RAF pilot closely familiar with the situation and that was not his view.
In that case they had a massive CRM problem then.
It can work very differently too. The Dutch King is flying RH seat with KLM on the 737 as a normal active pilot.
You can’t reach this level of CRM (who want to be RHS )
I don’t have sympathy with the experienced RAF pilot who failed to notice Prince Charles was approaching for the reciprocal 13/31 runway, with no other traffic. (Other traffic not allowed near royal flight.)
