Over the last few years several high-profile accidents involving historic aircraft have reignited the perennial debate regarding whether old aircraft should be allowed to fly and also carry passengers.
Of course they should! An aeroplane in a museum is nothing more than a disparate collection of metal, fabric, rubber and plastic — it’s just a dust-covered artefact, whereas an airworthy aircraft in its natural element is virtually a living thing. In his seminal book The Log from the Sea of Cortez, John Steinbeck observed that a boat can warp a man’s psyche, and how ‘the sight of a boat riding in the water clenches a fist of emotion in his chest’. He also wrote that ‘a boat, above all other inanimate things, is personified in man’s mind.’ A classic aircraft has the same effect — but only when it is ‘alive’.
