There were two ex Czech ones in Florida and I think there is one flyable one in California. There were some pictures the other year of one at an airshow.

I think your WJ173 and WJ174 will be WJ773 and WJ774

Re the US, would the FAA be happy that a nuclear capable low level bomber was flying around the good old US of A in private ownership?

Outside of NASA, I somehow can’t see it myself.

I would take the (personal) view that Branson’s involvement in this is just like his Concorde campaign, purely for keeping his name in the public eye and appearing to be willing to do one thing in the full knowledge that if push ever actually came to shove that it would be extremely unlikely to happen.

He gets better (and free) publicity from his PR company writing complaint letters to him about his airline food with all the resultant froth that generated and he doesn’t even have to put his hand in his pocket (except for paying their normal retainer).

No, he has a public persona of being alternative and an irritation to the establishment and this is just another example of maintaining that persona.

A bit like J Clarkson really.

Just had a look on the Charities Commission web site;

Charity no 1101948
Vulcan to the Sky

15 employees
20 volunteers

Income year to 31 July 2007 £2,166,568
Expenditure year to 31 July 2007 £1,636,413

Accounts sent to the Charities Commission 152 days late
Annual Return made to the Commission 227 days late

These are the last figures supplied by Vulcan to the Sky to the Commission.

Not making any comments.

http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/showpost.php?p=1336652&postcount=1276

I never did get any answers to my questions in the post referred to.

One interesting thing in the accounts as I recall was that Marshalls had agreed to write off any outstanding money owing to them when the aircraft was finally grounded.

Given that the accounts were up to July 2007 and it was something like £1.3 million then I wonder how much is owed now.

Look on the CAA website and ye shall find this page….

http://www.caa.co.uk/default.aspx?catid=1288&pagetype=90

Poor results for one quarter might be fine, but they may also be the harbingers of doom. I still don’t agree that they are ‘beating the recession’ as they claim (says the person who once calculated losses for IATA airlines on international scheduled services as being $5Bn and we thought that was bad back in 2002).