About the United Kingdom Aviation Heritage Trust

Let's be honest with each other. No completely sane person would ever contemplate restoring an old aircraft. They're fragile, complex, and incredibly demanding. Anyone who would voluntarily turn up at a freezing airfield with the specific aim of sacrificing yet more knuckle skin to a seized bolt that last moved when Bill Haley was still only half way round the clock has be three spanners short of a toolbox.

So why are we doing it? Quite simply, because if we don't who will? There's no National Trust for historic aeroplanes, no official body of any sort to protect these irreplaceable treasures. But they come from a time when air travel was still an adventure. When magical names like BOAC, BEA and TWA conjured visions of sun-blessed beaches on hand-painted posters that were works of art in their own right.

Half a century may seem a short time, but it's almost half the time powered flight has existed. When airliners like the Handley Page Herald first flew, barely fifty years had passed since the Wright Brothers' first flight. Back then no one would have doubted that the Wright Flyer and its contemporaries were important enough to preserve. Should we not feel the same responsibility for aircraft from the dawn of the jet age?

We're a dedicated bunch of committed, motivated, and possibly certifiably unbalanced people who have banded together to make a positive effort to preserve our aviation heritage. We formed the UK Heritage Aviation Trust in 2017 and set about the long and complex task of becoming an approved and registered charity. It was a proud moment when, in January 2018, that milestone was achieved. Charitable status does much more than provide a vehicle for attracting donations. It's a validation that the funds we receive will be subject to official scrutiny, meaning every penny must be spent responsibly in support of our aims.