I found out yesterday that the Yankee Lady would be leaving for California at Noon today. I figured that I would head over to Willow Run to see her off. I will have more thoughts on that after the pictures.
I arrived a little early at the airport. I wanted to make sure I had a decent spot and it turned out to be fairly decent. I was able to catch this RV-8 as it was doing touch and goes at the airport.
The RV-8 is a homebuilt aircraft that can be used for stunt flying. It was first introduced in 1995 and a little over 1600 have been built.
I think this particular one comes out of Monroe.
This is a 737 but I'm not sure who it belongs to. I'm pretty sure it is used for hauling freight.
The RV-8 again.
This is a Piper Archer that belongs to flight school that operates out of Willow Run. I think it is the school that now handles the Eastern Michigan flight program.
As I was looking at Flight Radar to see if the Yankee Lady had a flight plan, I saw that this plane would be taking off around the same time.
It is a 727 belonging to USA Jet. It was heading down to Laredo, TX. I presume it is delivering parts.
A Diamond DA-20.
The Piper Archer again.
The moment that I was waiting for, the Yankee Lady taking off from Willow Run for the last time. It was a pretty nice day for it.
The Yankee Air Force bought her in 1985 for $250,000. After some test hops, she was brought from Mesa, Arizona to Ypsilanti, MI.
When the museum got her to Ypsilanti, they found that they need to do alot of work to restore her to her condition in World War II.
It took nine years to do that and her first post-restoration flight took place in 1995.
She has been in a movie and took part in the dedication of the Memphis Belle at the US Air Force museum.
Last year, there was a directive from the FAA that kept her grounded. The Yankee Air Museum had to some work on her wing spar to make her compliant.
They had to do some other work on her this year.
In June, they announced that she was sold to a person in California.
It was announced kind of clumsily and caused a bit of uproar.
So now she is on her way to California where she will be taken apart and shipped to New Zealand where she will be completely restored. Her purchase price was 15 million.
As I said, they kind of fumbled the announcement of her sale. Initially reading between the lines, it sounded like the museum could be in some financial trouble. There were other people that explained it better. Namely, that she was getting expensive to maintain and it would come down to saving her or doing other things. They decided on other things.
To put it in perspective, I believe the cost of spar thing was close to a million dollars. It costs close to 300,000 to replace her engines. I'm not sure on costs of other parts but I imagine they are not cheap. I would hate to see them keep her and then have to scrap her later because of lack of funding. Of the planes in their collection, the B-17 was probably the most valuable.
So I hope she has a good home and may come around some time in the future.
No comments:
Post a Comment