http://www.pilotweb.aero Pilot September 2017 | 73
and was forced to make a wheels-up
landing back at its base at Yeovilton.
Despite a copybook arrival by Cmdr Simon
Hargreaves, the damage is severe, with
cracks in the tail booms and other damage
meaning a likely repair bill of around
£2 million.
It’s not just about money. The
increasingly constrained air display ‘boxes’,
the continuing ban on any aerobatics and
the requirement for just fly-pasts and
gentle wingovers, has taken the fun out of
displaying these aircraft for some of the
necessarily wealthy owners who operate
these aircraft. The owner of the
aforementioned North Weald-based
Vampire recently went on record as saying
that continuing to fly and display the
aircraft was “simply not going to work
for me”.
There is though, some good news.
A number of operators of BAeS
Strikemasters and Jet Provosts have
become popular air show attendees this
year, less overshadowed by more exotic
types. In addition, the Gnat Display Team,
themselves recovering from a tragic
accident which claimed the life of pilot
Kevin Whyman earlier in 2015, are aiming
to expand their fleet with the addition of
the first single-seat
Gnat F1 to have been
seen in British skies
since the early 1960s.
(They are also looking
for further trustees
and pilots to fly and
display their aircraft:
see p.24 — Ed.)
There is also the
tantalising prospect for some operators of
two-seat jets to potentially offer
passenger-carrying flights under the terms
of the CAA Safety Standard
Acknowledgement and Consent (SSAC)
guidelines, in a similar manner to two-seat
Spitfires and the like. This could create a
new and viable direction for the classic jet
community — so long as the CAA gets its
finger out!Flight and one to a Museum in Canada. Two
others, including the spectacular rainbow-
liveried Miss Demeanour, are currently
stored and up for sale. That leaves just
Hunter T7A G-FFOX. It has recently carried
out a successful series of ‘decontamination’
runs, but it is still at Västerås in Sweden,
where it was grounded when the CAA ban
came into force.
The story for other former military jets
is the same. Of the fleet of 1950s and
1960s classic jets that were formerly based
at Coventry, its brace of Gloster Meteors,
as well as miscellaneous de Havilland
Vampires and Venoms all seem to be
headed to the USA. The beautiful Vampire
T.11 maintained at North Weald is up for
sale and if you fancy an apparent bargain,
how about an airworthy Jet Provost T3 for
just £12,500? That’s not even the price of
a used Ford Fiesta!
Before you get too excited though, do
remember that operating a former military
jet has never been less than financially
onerous. Even the humble Jet Provost,
once rather cruelly described as having
“constant thrust, but variable noise” will
still sup up to 600 litres an hour of Jet-A1
at around 80 pence a litre, just in the
cruise. You can double that consumption if
you turn up
the volume.
For most classic jet
owners, income from
airshows has been a
vital component in
‘balancing the books’
and a common point
among aircraft
owners is that CAA
restrictions and increased organisers fees
have drastically reduced their income. This
has had a knock-on effect in maintenance
and engineering. Organisations have had
to reduce their staff and let go volunteers
who keep these aircraft airworthy.
Worse still, at the start of the summer
we lost another iconic fast jet from the
display scene when de Havilland Sea Vixen
G-CVIX suffered a hydraulic systems failureT
he wonderful RAF term for
accelerating progress, known as
‘getting one’s finger out’, could
perhaps do with a transfer to the
civilian world as administered by
the CAA. In this case the relevant digit was
extracted rather too slowly, with the CAA
only announcing at the start of July that it
had ‘withdrawn the safety directive which
grounded all Hawker Hunter aircraft on
the UK register’, a measure put in place
after the Shoreham Air Show disaster in
August 2015.
It was perhaps understandable at the
time, in the immediate aftermath of the
tragedy, to temporarily ground similar
aircraft in case an issue had stemmed from
the type’s airworthiness. That immediate
blanket grounding of the fleet then took
nearly two years to be rescinded; largely
one suspects, for political reasons.
Meanwhile, even the AAIB’s forensic
analysis of the aircraft type, design and
operation, threw up little more than some
minor technicalities which had no bearing
on the accident.
Now at least, the mighty Hunter,
regarded as many as the most iconic and
beautiful post-war jet fighter of them all,
can fly again. In theory at least....
It may be the damage has already
been done. The lengthy (and frankly
unnecessary) grounding has forced some
owners to come to the conclusion that
their aircraft are just not viable any more.
Of the six airworthy Hunters that were
flying in 2015, I would hazard a guess that
we’ll be lucky to see one maybe two flying
again here in the UK, if any at all.
As many of us well know, an aircraft
doesn’t stop costing you money, even when
it’s sitting on the ground. Aircraft hate not
to fly and even the best storage regimes
and decontamination runs can’t prevent a
steady deterioration in condition, but still
cost money — lots of it. That then starts to
put even more pressure on the owners.
At least two Hunters have been sold
overseas since the Shoreham accident; one
to the Royal Jordanian Air Force Historic
And about time too!
The mighty
Hunter can fly
again. In theory
at least...
In July the CAA announced that it had withdrawn the safety directive that
had grounded all Hunter Aircraft on the UK register since August 2015
Regulars | Open Cockpit
STEPHEN SLATER
Stephen is CEO of the Light Aircraft Association,
Vice-Chair of the General Aviation Awareness Council,
flies a Piper Cub and spent seven years helping restore
the ‘Biggles Biplane’ 1914 BE2c replica