Why? Firstly it’s not ‘dead’, but active, popular cherished and admired. Please. Morn? Shesh.
It was for sale and no-one wanted to pay to buy and operate it in the UK.
I fail to see any better alternative, realistically, the others being grounding in the UK or elsewhere due to the demonstrated – not theoretical – lack of interest.
It would be a damn sight more polite to appreciate there was a millionaire-backed museum prepared to bring it halfway around the world and fly it through the whole year.
A significant extra cost was dealt with recently with major engine rebuilds. Had a marginal UK group got hold of it, it’s quite likely that would’ve grounded it. I’d also wager that G-LOSM doesn’t clock up as many hours as the Aussie F8.
There’s also a 1/2 shy of an 8 operating regularly in Oxfordshire, too.
I’m sorry, the southern UK has the greatest density of operating vintage aircraft and historic aircraft on display in the world; there’s nothing to complain about there. For me to get to Temora to see it is a 7 hour drive; more than I ever needed to get to a show in the UK.
Hrumph. 😉
Your Hrumphing is all well and good but why shouldn’t we in the UK, as individuals, ‘mourn’ “Winston”?
“no-one wanted to pay to buy and operate it in the UK” is about as absurd a generalisation as it’s possible to make, and comments like J Boyle’s “We’re back to the old “What’s ours is ours, what’s yours is ours” theory of UK aviation enthusiasts” adds nothing to the discussion either. Another ludicrous and insulting generalisation.
I dare say there are a great many folk who wanted to pay to buy and operate it in the UK but simply weren’t able to. Maybe if I was a millionaire backer of a “millionaire-backed museum” I would have bought Winston myself. However, I am not (nor ever likely to be) and I’m guessing that most other people with an interest in such things aren’t either. That means I/we had no more influence over the fate of Winston that I/we had over the fate of the Titanic. The aircraft therefore left the country with us, as interested individuals, unable to do anything about it. So why shouldn’t we be sad to see it go?
To use your parlance it would be a damn sight more polite to appreciate there were at least as many, powerless, people in the UK sad to see Winston go as there were Australians happy to see it arrive. Unless it returns to the UK in the future, for all practical purposes, it makes no difference if it’s airworthy in Australia or airworthy on the moon, I (and a great many like me) are unlikely to see it again on the ground or in the air. Another reason for me, as an individual, to ‘mourn’ its ‘loss’.
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