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Brian Campbell, 47, is the flight test weight and balance lead, a complex job he formerly carried out in the Air Force as a loadmaster on the giant C-17 military transports.

"To meet the Duchess and for her to be so interested in and engaged with our stories was brilliant," Loadmaster Sergeant Mark Curtis told People magazine about the event.

The crew of three - two pilots and a loadmaster - fill up the plane via a cargo ramp at the rear.

Our main things are finding the exact center and then how strong the winds are, and while we do that our loadmaster is releasing dropsondes, an instrument that falls from the aircraft to the surface of the water that's collecting wind speed, wind direction, temperature, dew point and sea level pressure.

Army in Europe, Ben Hodges, tweeted that a photograph published by Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs of thousands of cardboard boxes stacked in a plane hold was a “hoax” because “no professional Loadmaster in the world . . . in any air force . . . would load a plane like this.”