‘Flying is my happy place’, Prince of Wales says during visit

The Prince of Wales has said flying is his “happy place” while reminiscing with some of his former air force colleagues.

Prince William chatted about his time with the air force during a visit to RAF Benson, in Oxfordshire, alongside the Crown Prince Hussein of Jordan.

Remembering his “glory days” of serving with the RAF Search and Rescue Force, the Prince described flying Sea King helicopters and how their sound still goes “straight to my heart”.

When asked if he still spent any time in the cockpit, the prince replied: “I do still fly, yeah – I keep my hours going.”

“When you learn that skill set, you just don’t want it to go. I’ve definitely lost a lot of the skills I had, but I like to keep on top of my flying, keep doing it,” William said.

“And it’s my happy place, I love flying.”

The future King served a three-year tour with the Search and Rescue Force before leaving the Armed Forces in 2013.

During his time based at RAF Valley in Anglesey, he carried out 156 search and rescue operations resulting in 149 people being rescued.

He later served as a helicopter pilot with the East Anglian Air Ambulance, flying missions for two years before stepping down in July 2017 to focus on his royal duties.

The prince told a group of his former colleagues at Benson on Wednesday: “I miss the Search and Rescue – glory days.

“I miss the Sea King flying around, because when I hear it, that noise, as it flies past. We had obviously the US state visit the other day seven aircraft flying over.

“Sea King comes in, I was like ‘there she is’ that noise went straight to my heart.”

RAF Benson is home to 28 (Army Cooperation) Squadron, a unit training aircrew to fly Chinook helicopters, and William and Crown Prince Al Hussein bin Abdullah II helped the technicians with maintenance work.

The future monarchs helped tighten a nut on an oil reserve for a rotorhead – the large assembly a Chinook’s rotor blades are connected to on top of the aircraft – using a torque wrench.

After the wrench made a satisfying click, William joked: “You will check before it goes back (into service), I don’t want to be responsible.”

The two princes later had a private briefing about undisclosed matters.

Flight Lieutenant Steve Wilders, a Chinook instructor, served alongside the prince in search and rescue at RAF Valley and later once piloted a royal helicopter carrying William.

After speaking to William, he said: “It was really nice to hear that he has carried on flying – he’s still a pilot.

“He made it sound as though he still enjoys it and it’s a nice break from the everyday pressures I suppose, getting up and flying away from everything.”