Rare Airplanes in Flight

FLYING Staff

Tuesday, August 27, 2013 at 12:30 AM ET

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Key Takeaways:

The article highlights the extreme rarity of historic aircraft and the profound dedication of individuals and institutions required to restore and maintain a select few in flying condition.
It showcases a diverse range of rare, often one-of-a-kind, flying aircraft across different aviation eras, including a wooden WWII Mosquito, the futuristic Beech Starship, and the pioneering Bleriot XI.
Maintaining these unique flying artifacts often involves overcoming significant challenges like sourcing obsolete parts, extensive rebuilding, and ensuring continued support, making their flights a testament to preservation efforts.

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de Havilland Mosquito photos by Scott Slocum|

When I first came across Jane’s All the World’s Aircraft as a new associate editor at Flying magazine in the mid-1990s, I was already a longtime aviation-history enthusiast — an incurable condition I inherited from my father. Jane’s, as I hope you know, is the record of aircraft development. Most years since 1909, Jane’s, founded by Fred Jane, has published a volume that audaciously proposes to do just what the name of the tome promises: document every production airplane in the world (along with a good number of kits and projects and, frankly, wild dreams).