The replacement aircraft (1/2)

During 1999 Ola Carlsson ended his leadership of the club and Claes Insulander was chosen as the new president. With many years of experience from the swedish world of steamboats and not afraid of crazy projects, he and the club started the search for a replacement aircraft. The Fireschool came up with some demands for this, actually set by Civil Aviation Administration and necessary for receiving the permission. It had to be minimum a 30-seater with low wings and overwing emergency exits. Couldn't be that hard could it? At Arlanda the scrapping of three Fokker F28 and two TriStars were just completed. We were to late for this but still numerous solutions were left.

West Air Sweden used a HS748 for spareparts. An Estonian company offered a Tu134 in Tallinn which was very cheap. SAAB was going to retire one of their SAAB 2000 prototypes. A BAC 1-11 was also considered as it was grounded at Arlanda since a hard landing at Arlanda 7th July 1997. The difficult part turned out to be how to deliver the aircraft to Halmstad. The Tu134 project was abandonned due to its lack of flyability and transportation by sea way to expensive. The HS748 project was also abandonned mainly because it would cost to much to restore it to a status accepted by the school. The BAC project would also cost to much due to the massive restoration but this one could be delivered on time. The SAAB project interested the school most as this was a modern airliner still in use by many companies. The problem was SAAB could not let us have the aircraft on time. With time being the biggest issue it we decided to deliver the BAC without any demands of restoration if we then delivered the SAAB as soon as possible and restored it to a "real" airliner. With this solution presented, the school could start its courses in time and the school would later have the trainingaircraft they really wanted. Everybody happy! Except the fact that two different special transports had to be arranged and nevertheless be financed with money we didn't have... Time for the magic wand!