RAF plane flew hundreds of miles for PM photoshoot before flying back

An RAF aircraft flew hundreds of miles from a base in Scotland for a photoshoot with Boris Johnson before flying back.

Images of the prime minister with two RAF aircraft featured on a number of newspaper front pages on Friday after his visit to RAF Waddington in Lincolnshire the previous day.

An RAF P-8A Poseidon, which Mr Johnson was snapped standing in front of, travelled 330 miles from its base in Lossiemouth, Moray, for the visit.

The maritime patrol aircraft, which is designed for anti-submarine warfare, left shortly before 9am on Wednesday.

It flew back on Thursday around 6.20pm, after the PM had finished his visit.

Manufactured in the US city of Seattle, the aircraft arrived in the UK in November 2021 and has flown six times since then, according to Flightradar24.com, a flight tracking website.

This total includes its trip to Waddington on Wednesday and the return journey on Thursday.

The plane has never previously visited the base.

During his trip, Mr Johnson was also pictured sitting in an RAF fast jet.

This flew from its home base of RAF Coningsby, 15 miles away from RAF Waddington.

Both aircraft flew back to their respective bases once the PM left.

A Ministry of Defence spokesperson said the aircraft carried out training flights before and after Mr Johnson’s visit.

“This enabled a small number of aircraft to be used to demonstrate how the RAF defends the UK and our NATO allies across Europe,” they added.

“At no point did this impact on any ongoing operations.”

Downing Street has also been contacted for comment.

Mr Johnson said he was visiting to “talk to some of our crew, the officers who are involved in very, very important intelligence-gathering and surveillance”.

He added: “Some of the planes here today are going to be used very shortly over the border in Belarus, in Poland, and elsewhere over Ukraine, to see what’s going on and to allow us to have even finer detail evaluation of the military dispositions there.”

The MoD said on Wednesday that four extra Typhoon jets had been deployed to Cyprus to patrol the skies over eastern Europe.

Type 45 destroyer HMS Diamond is also getting ready to deploy to the eastern Mediterranean alongside other NATO vessels.

In addition to this, the UK had doubled the number of personnel it has in Estonia under NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence mission.