Originally Posted by
chevvron
VIGILANTS
Photo on Flyer Forums showing a huge pile of Vigilants in pieces.
I'm guessing it was taken at Kemble judging by the '747s parked next to them.
I thought the intention was to re-furbish the Vigis and re-sell them so more MOD money wasted.
You are wrong here. The MOD Disposal Sales team did sell all those to Aerobility in 2020 and MOD got fully paid by that organisation at that point and has zero stake in them now.
Every one of these is civil registered, the CAA authorised them to retain their military markings as is common for what they now are 'Warbirds'. See here
https://www.g109able.org/news/aerobi...isabled-flying
https://www.g109able.org/faqs
As an example in the photo is tailcode SH - From the GINFO civil register:
Mark: G-CMHV
Current reg. date: 09-Jul-2020
Previous ID:ZJ960
De-reg. date:
-
Status: Registered
Type: GROB G109B
Serial no.: 6556
Airworthiness category: CS-22A : Sailplane or Powered Sailplane - Utility Category
Year built:1990
Registered owner details
Ownership status: Owned
Registered owners:
AEROBILITY HOLDINGS CIC
BLACKBUSHE AIRPORT
The full register block is G-CMGD all the way to G-CMIN.
It was always Aerobility's plan to sell these on the open market. However, it is now the case that Aerobility working with Grob that has decided the refurbishment is too great a challenge (as the MOD had found before taking their disposal decision in 2020) with too small of a potential aftersales market for these 35 year old airframes. Therefore these civil airframes have instead been sold by aerobility to the scrappers. to recover the residual scrap value, offsetting.against the Aerobility initial investment and defray the (high) cost of refurbishment of the few airframes they actually wanted for themselves and which are airworthy with new engines in civll markings.