{"id":31390,"date":"2015-05-21T04:00:26","date_gmt":"2015-05-21T08:00:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=31390"},"modified":"2015-05-20T17:08:58","modified_gmt":"2015-05-20T21:08:58","slug":"this-year-will-be-the-last-in-the-air-for-xh558-the-last-of-the-avro-vulcan-bombers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2015\/05\/21\/this-year-will-be-the-last-in-the-air-for-xh558-the-last-of-the-avro-vulcan-bombers\/","title":{"rendered":"This year will be the last in the air for XH558, the last of the Avro Vulcan bombers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>At <em>The Register<\/em>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theregister.co.uk\/2015\/05\/20\/vulcan_xh588_swansong_grounded_end_year\/\" target=\"_blank\">Lester Haines<\/a> explains why the trust that operates XH558 is having to ground the aircraft permanently:<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/RAF-Vulcan-XH558.jpg\" alt=\"RAF Vulcan XH558\" width=\"625\" height=\"388\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-17598\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/RAF-Vulcan-XH558.jpg 625w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/RAF-Vulcan-XH558-150x93.jpg 150w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/RAF-Vulcan-XH558-480x297.jpg 480w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 625px) 100vw, 625px\" \/><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The Vulcan To The Sky Trust has <a href=\"http:\/\/www.vulcantothesky.org\/news\/665\/82\/Important-announcement-on-the-2015-season.html\" target=\"_blank\">announced<\/a> &#8220;with considerable sadness&#8221; that this summer will be the public&#8217;s last chance to catch Avro Vulcan XH558 thundering through British skies, as the legendary V-bomber will be permanently grounded at the end of this flying season.<\/p>\n<p>The trust explains that the axe will fall because &#8220;three expert companies on whom we depend \u2013 known as the &#8216;technical authorities&#8217; \u2013 have together decided to cease their support at the end of this flying season&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>It elaborates:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>At the heart of their decision are two factors. First, although we are all confident that XH558 is currently as safe as any aircraft flying today, her structure and systems are already more than ten percent beyond the flying hours of any other Vulcan, so knowing where to look for any possible failure is becoming more difficult. These can be thought of as the \u2018unknown unknown\u2019 issues, which can be impossible to predict with any accuracy. Second, maintaining her superb safety record requires expertise that is increasingly difficult to find.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Keeping XH558 in the air has been an epic undertaking, and not without wing-and-a-prayer moments involving <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theregister.co.uk\/2010\/09\/27\/vulcan_tin_rattling\/\" target=\"_blank\">last-minute injections of cash<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>At The Register, Lester Haines explains why the trust that operates XH558 is having to ground the aircraft permanently: The Vulcan To The Sky Trust has announced &#8220;with considerable sadness&#8221; that this summer will be the public&#8217;s last chance to catch Avro Vulcan XH558 thundering through British skies, as the legendary V-bomber will be permanently [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[123,145,107],"class_list":["post-31390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-military","tag-aircraft","tag-airforce","tag-nukes"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-8ai","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31390"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31390\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31391,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31390\/revisions\/31391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}