Nobody told the Historic Aircraft Preservation Society it couldn’t have a Lancaster flown back to the UK from Australia, and operate it in private hands — so, it did. It left an outstanding legacy, for the ‘Lanc’ now known as Just Jane
If you don’t ask, you don’t get’. For the Historic Aircraft Preservation Society, that mantra proved both a blessing and a curse. When it wrote to the French government asking for an Avro Lancaster, little did it know it might actually be given one. But, despite the considerable ordeals that followed, thank goodness it was. Without that eager — inspired, naïve, call it what you will — intervention, we wouldn’t now be anticipating the moment when NX611 flies again.
When it takes to the air at East Kirkby, on current timescales it will be doing so for the first time in almost 60 years. Had things turned out more positively in this Lancaster’s previous airworthy life, we’d be looking at a different story. The career of NX611 with HAPS and subsequent operator Reflectaire is a tale very much of its time, when groups of well-meaning preservation pioneers sought to save what they could, even as flyers, on a relative shoestring, calling in help and favours from all quarters to make up for what they la…
