Keeping Vintage Planes in the Sky: ‘It’s Part of Your Soul’

Travel Blog  •  Eva Holland  •  09.16.08 | 10:03 AM ET

imageFor all the nostalgists out there (I know I’m not the only one), the Globe and Mail has a heartwarming item about the volunteers who keep Canada’s shrinking fleet of vintage planes in the air. A handful of aging pilots, mechanics and engineers put in hundreds of thousands of hours each year keeping the remaining planes—including a World War II-era Lancaster bomber, one of just two in the world that remain airworthy—in flying condition.

“It’s not a hobby,” one volunteer pilot told the Globe. “It’s not a pastime. It’s part of your soul. In my case, it’s what defines me. I don’t know what I’d be doing if I weren’t flying these old planes.”

Related on World Hum:
* U.S. Airline Fleets: Dingy, Dusty and Growing Old Fast

Photo by Martin Pettitt via Flickr (Creative Commons)

Tags: Air Travel, Historic Travel, News and Briefs

Eva Holland is the senior editor of World Hum. Her writing has also appeared in Reader's Digest Canada, NationalGeographic.com, the National Post, the Montreal Gazette, the Ottawa Citizen and WestJet's Up! Magazine, among other publications. She's based in Canada's Yukon territory.


1 Comment for Keeping Vintage Planes in the Sky: ‘It’s Part of Your Soul’

pam 09.17.08 | 7:58 PM ET

I had the good fortune to fly out of Valdez, Alaska (yup, of oil spill fame) on a beautiful older silver bird, a dual prop plane covered with rivets. I don’t know enough about planes to say what it was, but I remember it clearly, nearly 15 years after the fact. I asked the guy at the desk if I’d be issued a leather helmet and he laughed in the good humor that my remark intended. Later that day, from my windowseat, I saw the Northern Lights.

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