Palm Beach, Florida: The Duke of York is facing renewed questions about his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein after it emerged that the convicted paedophile landed his private jet at an RAF fighter base during a visit to Sandringham.
Epstein's Gulfstream flew in to RAF Marham with him and the Duke's friend Ghislaine Maxwell on board, before they enjoyed the Duke's hospitality at the Queen's Norfolk estate 32km away. The arrangement was described as "unusual" by civil aviation sources, as Marham is the RAF's biggest front-line base and home to four Tornado squadrons.
No special treatment
It was unclear exactly what procedures the billionaire had gone through to receive approval. The Ministry of Defence insisted that Epstein had been given no special treatment, and that civil aircraft were "routinely" allowed to land there.
Flight logs for his Gulfstream, obtained by The Daily Telegraph, show that the 12-seater executive jet flew from Teterboro airport outside New York, to Le Bourget in Paris on December 5, 2000, with Epstein, Maxwell, a woman called Kelly Spamm and "ET" on board. "ET" is thought to refer to Emmy Tayler, Maxwell's British assistant.
The party flew on to Luton the next day, and on December 7 landed at RAF Marham, by now also carrying Tom Pritzker, a friend of Epstein, and an unnamed "female". Epstein and Maxwell stayed at Sandringham as guests of the Duke, before leaving the country on December 9 on the same aircraft from Norwich International Airport.
A spokesman for the airline pilots' union Balpa said it was possible for aircraft to land at RAF bases "with permission and by arrangement", but one commercial pilot said it was "unusual" for private jets to land at front-line bases.
