Agaricus is right - the 737 comparison was an early guess by someone that turned out to be wrong. In fact, Sally falls into Band 6 of EC Regulation 785/2004, and a 737 is in Band 7. However, Band 6 includes aircraft such as the 110-seater Embraer 190, so I don’t believe the argument about comparative risk is any less strong.
Tim S is right too, but although B-17 Preservation (Sally B’s operators) should be able to get a competitive insurance quote based on the risks of this cover, there is in reality no competition. Virtually all aviation insurance in Britain (and probably the rest of Europe as well) comes back to one desk at Lloyds, no matter who the broker is.
B-17 Preservation are optimistic that we will find a fix to get Sally B airborne again in time for her annual Memorial Day flypast at the American Cemetery at Madingley near Cambridge, and then for the national celebrations of the 60th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, when she is due to fly over Buckingham Palace in a big formation on 10 July.
If we fail, she may never fly again in Britain. Even if we succeed, getting her airborne again is just the first step. We need to sort out the whole problem satisfactorily, or she will not be able to continue into the 2006 season in Britain.
So, anything you can do - especially right now giving some money, no matter how little - will help us towards that first step. As you know, the website is
www.sallyb.org.uk
And, of course, the other thing you can do is make as big, and as public a fuss about this as possible - including lobbying your new MP, or writing to the papers or the broadcasters. All of this is covered on the website. There will also be a petition to sign soon - you may already have seen it at Duxford this weekend.
Incidentally, it was me that you might have heard on Radio 4 ‘Today’, and that broadcast has resulted in a huge amount of support, and also the programme mentioned it again on Saturday. But when we tried to get some national tv companies (as opposed to regional) to follow it up, they said that an appearance on ‘Today’ is now considered to be the peak of a story, so unless anything had moved on, they wouldn’t take it any further. Wonderful..... Also, I got the story accepted by PA and Reuters (the two biggest press agencies), but as far as I know they didn’t manage to sell any of it to any of the papers today (Saturday) Does anyone know different?
One final thing. As far as I know, the Pink Lady folks are making dark noises about not being able to fly another season with this expense - and as things stand it looks unlikely that she’ll be allowed into UK to join the flypast over Buckingham Palace on 10 July. Let’s hope some answers are found for her too.
Finally finally, the ‘exemptions’ to EC Regulation 785/2004 apply to things like microlights, kites and balloons, so at first sight they wouldn’t be applicable to big fixed wing aircraft. However, you never know, there might be a chink of light there.....
Let’s not give up.....
Sean Maffett
AirSound Commentator
For B-17 Preservation
www.sallyb.org.uk
www.airsound.co.uk