Aircraft should never be allowed to die

[britfrog 180]

Call me an old fool , a romantic, whatever, but I hate to see aircraft in a boneyard awaiting the scrap metal merchant who in my eyes is raping an aircraft for his profit.

Maybe because i was brought up on Thomas the tank engine stories , that steam engines breath life when steamed up, maybe it is because i was destined to love aviation before I was a twinkle in my dad's eye, but I hate to see a once proud aircraft rotting away, especially when you consider that it has in its life carried thousands of youngsters in its life who were all dreaming of flying and perhaps becoming pilots one day. For me the biggest sin of all in recent years was the scrapping of Concorde, may the pen pushers and numbers crunchers who are to blame for that rest in a perpetual sewage tank for ever. It is their fault that aviation has come to a full stop, with little or no technological progress, taking place.

So it gladdens me a little when I see that someone has finally taken up the baton to save a very iconic aircraft, a one of a kind, a plane that literally changed the way the world's population goes from A to B, and that is a Jumbo. As I have retold elsewhere on mutleys I went on board the first 3 jumbo's that ever entered service as they were handed over to Pan Am at Nassau, (I worked for Pan Am at the time) to avoid, US taxes at the time, and nothing can prepare you for the first time you come eye to eye with a 747 for the first time, it was huge, more than twice the size of anything else at the time, Of course nowadays we dont even blink when we see one or fly on one it is part of everyday life, but back then one could hardly comprehend how something like that could get off the ground.

The plane in question being restored is the original test plane

I just think it is sad that this plane also nearly didnt get restored either

read the following little story:

 

http://www.seattletimes.com/pacific-nw-magazine/from-rust-bucket-to-showpiece-volunteers-are-rescuing-the-first-boeing-747/

 

 

[allardjd 1,853]

I can't disagree with the sentiment, but the money has to come from somewhere or somebody. Even Concorde, as ground-breaking as it was, mostly wasn't covering the costs of operating it over most of its service life. Other people's tax money was sustaining it, and one way of looking at it is that poor people's tax money was subsidizing rich people's ability to cross the ocean at supersonic speeds. Not saying that was not the right thing to do but things like that can't be sustained forever.

Saving airframes from the scrapper, whether to be restored to flyable condition or just put on display somewhere is a costly thing. The first cost is the foregoing of the revenue that the scrap would bring and it gets a lot more expensive after that. A lot of places are doing good work in that area but the bottom line is, they can't all be saved. It's a pity but economics are a real force and can't be ignored. Companies are accountable to their shareholders and boards of directors to make a profit, and governments, try as they might to avoid it, are at least a little bit accountable to their taxpayers to be efficient or at least not blatantly crooked or wasteful. The former mostly succeed; the latter mostly fail.

Like you, I hate to see noble birds cut up to become (mostly) automobile trim, but if there's no money to save them or preserve them, that's the way the cockpit crumbles. I rationalize it by thinking that the modest financial benefit they provide to their final owners (or the taxpayers, for military aircraft) as marketable scrap is the final entry in the ledger of what benefits they've produced over their operating life.

Every once in a while there's another reason for doing so too. All the F-14 airframes, with the exception of a few on display here and there, were quickly and utterly destroyed after the Navy retired them to prevent the inadvertent diversion of spare parts to Iran, the only country who still has them.

John

[Quickmarch 488]

Every once in a while there's another reason for doing so too. All the F-14 airframes, with the exception of a few on display here and there, were quickly and utterly destroyed after the Navy retired them to prevent the inadvertent diversion of spare parts to Iran, the only country who still has them.

John

At least there was a reason.

The Canadian Government destroyed the Arrow in a way that was criminal and totally unreasonable.

In a previous post, I described a visit to the Evergreen Aviation and Space Museum in McMinnvile, Oregon at the beginning of the current trip that my wife and I are currently enjoying. This is the home of the Spruce Goose and a huge collection of other aircraft. This collection includes two 747's (one turned into a kiddies water park) that are owned by Evergreen Aviation.

My hat is off to the former owner of Evergreen (may he rest in peace) for spending his untold millions in a way that we can all enjoy. Would that there were many more like him.

[allardjd 1,853]

The Canadian Government destroyed the Arrow in a way that was criminal and totally unreasonable.

 

Is this BS then?  Could be for all I know...

 

From Wiki...

 

Within two months of the project cancellation, all aircraft, engines, production tooling and technical data were ordered scrapped. Officially, the reason given for the destruction order from Cabinet and the Chiefs of Staff was to destroy classified and "secret" materials used in the Arrow/Iroquois programs. The action has been attributed to Royal Canadian Mounted Police fears that a Soviet "mole" had infiltrated Avro, later confirmed to some degree in the Mitrokhin archives.

 

John

[Quickmarch 488]

Yeah!

There's always a "reason".