Is XV741 still at Gosport? Reported there in ’09.

http://http://forum.keypublishing.com/showthread.php?t=93318

I remember seeing something like that in the late ’60s at Lewis’s Department Store in Blackpool. It included a lot of tin toy aircraft, incuding big metal Lufthansa Viscounts that had engines that started sequentially. There was a runway with a scalextric-sype track, allowing aircraft to “take off” and fly behind a curtain.

It was a travelling exhibit, so probably turned up in a London department store too.

M

He’s got first dabs on the second Martin Mars as well. To be kept airworthy.

Sunderland is under cover, and in very good shape.

M

There are also one and a half VC-10s at Brooklands, and an ex-BA standard at Hermeskiel in Germany.

I doubt that there is another Mercure in any collection.

At least 6 of the 12 Mercures survive.

There’s one at the Musee del’Air at Le Bourget, one at the Technik Museum in Speyer, one at Orly and three others in use with technical schools in France – two at Bordeaux and one at Montpelier.

A lot of horse**** is talked about returning Concorde to flight in a “heritage” capacity.

It would be downright irresponsible and dangerous to do this – the aircraft was not designed to be operated in that way.

Never mind the insurmountable problems of design authority and so on.

The only likelihood of ever seeing a Concorde fly again is in an R&D capacity for a future SST. An unlikely prospect in the current economic climate, but one day perhaps more enlightened thinking will be applied to the airline industry.

Any R&D flights would be under Airbus’ authority, and would use the “semi-live” Concorde at Toulouse.

I could give you chapter and verse on the technical difficulties, but it’s not worth it. “Concorde to the Sky” is not going to happen. Ever. End of. Plenty of other worthwhile projects to burn money on. Including finding a sensible home for G-BOAB.

Move along, nothing to see here.

Love the Biggin ’72 shot… Spitfire looking wistfully out of the hangar, thinking “one day…”

There used to be an old York mouldering-away on the grass outside… Whatever happened to it…?

At Duxford, fully restored in Dan-Air colours