How Many Planes at Kemble?
 

I just noticed another 747 has turned up at Kemble.

Now with that , the other 747 , lots of 146s etc will there be any room left to fly soon, or is the intention to cover every inch of hard with retired a.c.

The other question is, are they airworthy and how much would an hour in one be?

Yeah - popped over to AV8 for lunch yesterday - two 747's - boy do they make the 146's look like toys!

Do you think they also had to fly the noise abatement approach!!! Must be quite a sight if you're in the village before the threshold of 26.

My CFI thinks they are old -200 variants there for dismantlement from a European firm that's gone bust.

I think you will find they are ex EAC 747-200's, based at Bournemouth, and they are not expected to fly again.

And Minardi are still at the back of the grid. EAC employees must be livid seeing the company's funds raped to fund an F1 team. I believe it is still going, is a tiny fraction of the size it was.

High Wing,

Apologies for my ignorance, but I'm not entirely sure what you mean? Are you saying that the panes belong to a company that's cutting costs, but still sponsoring an F1 team?

DW

Sorry. As I understand is (it is a Rumour Network after all), EAC (European Air Charter) owned the ageing 747s as well as 737-200s too, and were based at Bournemouth. EAC is/was owned by Paul Stoddard who subsequntly also bought the Minardi F1 team. All of a sudden and out of the blue a high proportion of the workforce were made redudant. What was very odd about the whole affair is that they just went on a recruiting splurge, hiring quite a few low-time F/Os and paid for their type-ratings!!

Ahh I see. Remember seeing a programme on Paul - he has a 1st class seat that been motorised and drives around his hangars in that - seems a bit eccentric!

Would love to have seen the 74's coming in to Kemble though - it's one of my favourite fields. The time before I had two Hunter's doing a run and break as we were set on finals - distracting but breathtaking at the same time!

Just to add a bit about the Stoddard/Minardi Formula 1 tie-up. He has now sold the Minardi team to Red Bull and it will become the Squadra Taura Rossa or somesuch for 2006. He allegedly received £40million for the team which might be what's financing Ozjet?

40 million!!! A bit better than the 6p in the pound settlement the staff made redundant in 2004 got as settlement of monies owed :mad:


I always thought that the Minardi team cars were excellent value for money for the companies that advertised on them. They went slowly enough for the crowd to be able to read all the adverts in one go :E :E

SHOCK HORROR!
latest amendment to the AIP says that wef 19 Jan 06 'non-radio aircraft not excepted'
Could this be a typo?