Another apporach to try to understand the dilemma faced by museums is visitor stimulus per m2 of enclosed space….

Clearly a collection of well known smaller aircraft is going to generate more than larger, historically important, yet unknown airframe…

The focus for the last 10 years has been on infrastrucutre improvements to museums…..viz AAM and AirSpace at Duxford, new wntrance at Hendon, new display hall at Cosford, new hanger at Newark, refurnbed hangers at MoS, all partially funded by the Lottery.

Conversely there has been relatively little increased funding for Conservation programmes and Restoration work.

The major museums have therefore focussed on increasing visitor numbers and expenditure in order to generate additional revenue for the Conservation side of affairs….

The new phase of building will aim to cover the remaining externally located Concordes sowe will see new display building in Manchester, Brooklands and Filton going up in the next 2-8 years.

The other major museums, having focussed on infrastructure will return to a Conservation/Preservation focus for the next few years….

Sadly unless a musuem of wealthy individual funds a resotration the more well known and ‘fashionable’ aircraft will always get priority over the others, rare or not….

A Shak is nowhere near as sexy as a Vulcan…even if it needs its turn indoors…

Also note that whilst Duxford is primarily viewed as the IWM, the airliners are ‘owned by the DAS, not the IWM…different beasts…Concorde and the Comet are going into AirSpace because of their historical value in the GLOBAL history of aviation…not because they are IWM’s planes.

Even at Duxford physical space is an issue. The south side of the airfield is currently NOT avalaible for building…nor is the land beyond the Land Warfare Hall…the only Space left is that between the AAM and the LWH, and even then they are reluctant to lose all the event parking that this provides….

Heyho…