The Ministry of Defence has launched a tender seeking a contractor to deliver major maintenance and component support for the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight’s Lancaster bomber, PA474 — one of only two airworthy Lancasters remaining in the world.
According to the contract notice, the project will cover “major maintenance, IAW the Aircraft Document Set including additional and emergent work.”
The supplier will also be responsible for the “design and manufacture of jigs and tools, procurement of long lead materiel and technical preparation activity to support the replacement of the Front Main Spar,” although the spar replacement itself is scheduled for 2029–2030 and falls outside this particular contract.
In addition, the contract will include the “supply, maintenance, repair and overhaul of Lancaster airframe components IAW approved Technical Information.” However, the MoD specifies that “engine and propeller component support does not form part of this contract requirement.”
The MOD outlines strict requirements for prospective bidders. The supplier must have “experience in delivering maintenance of large historic aircraft with Suitably Qualified and Experienced Personnel (SQEP) as part of the extant workforce.”
Additionally, companies must hold “a minimum of a BCAR A8-23 (M1) approval with appropriate Component Maintenance codes.”
Physical infrastructure is another crucial factor: “The maintenance location must have infrastructure in situ (hangar space) to accommodate the Lancaster, noting the aircraft has a wingspan of 102ft/31m,” the notice states. Moreover, “the maintenance location must be at a paved airfield that the Lancaster can operate in and out.”
The value of the contract is set at £4 million, and the work is to be delivered from 1 July 2025. Bids must be submitted by 11:00 on 7 May 2025.
The MOD has indicated that “variant bids may be considered,” but also stresses that “this is a one-off contract” and “renewals are not available.” The Battle of Britain Memorial Flight (BBMF) Project Team within Defence Equipment and Support (DE&S) is overseeing the tender.
Strong case to be argued that costs for things like the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight, Red Arrows, National Museum of the Royal Navy, etc, should all come from the Department for Culture, Media & Sport – though spent under the direction of the MoD. These are all a more important part of our culture than the likes of the Royal Opera House, etc.
More important in your opinion really. Culture isn’t a competitive field. But if you want numbers there are for instance, around 50,000 theatre performances in the UK annually attended by approx 20 million people, supporting over 40,000 jobs and contributing 1.4 billion to the economy. Airshows are big business but not in the same league, a good year sees about 4 million attendees, contributing a 150 million to the economy. Most importantly theatres exist in every part of the country and operate all year, while airshows are more geographically limited and are once a year event. In terms of bang for buck put the culture money in theatres I’m afraid.
And anyhow WW2 worship is an increasingly niche area as it slips from public memory, in the same way we no longer commemorate Crimea or the Boer War. This is how it should be, time moves on. And as for the Red Bores, dullest part of an airshow is watching nine 1970s vintage trainers do the same old shtick with their smoke. Time is moving on, if you want to engage young people I would suggest ancient planes from a War that is almost as historic as the Napoleonic in their eyes and vintage aero circus skills in trainer aircraft older than their parents is no longer the way to do it. If you’re going to spend a bag of money to do public engagement, commemoration and recruitment then you need to spend it meaningfully and make it relevant. There’s a role for Spitfires, but an increasingly small one IMHO.
What a load of bollocks.
I suspect that the RAF is the most experienced after the many decades of looking after their Lancaster. Is this blame shifting/back covering/distancing themselves after the Spitfire crash? Are my posts still being moderated? Why?
I’d assume everyone’s posts are being moderated to keep out the bots.
Hopefully that’s not too much extra workload, but if it is my recommendation would be to only require replies to posts being moderated as the bots were only truly disruptive to the site when they maxed out the reply limit.
Also might be worth looking into fighting bots with bots, there are a few tutorials on making custom LMMs I can point to.
It seems my posts are not being moderated, apparently I haven’t made it onto the naughty list yet.
Same, I wonder if George has just created an “approved commentator list”
There are a core of people who comment on a regular basis however I do not comment necessarily on a daily basis so I doubt I will make it onto the approved list just yet. We will see.
I doubt it John I suspect they simply want to fix a budget for this work at a time when there is going to be pressure on resouces and the Government will want to spend every penny on building up current forces. Keeping these assets airworthy is not necesarily a job for the RAF but perhaps for former RAF personnel.
Is it really a conspiracy theory as to why the RAF will not be maintaining the Lancaster or is it a more obvious reason such as a shrinking workforce? It just seems like another poor decision to the average Joe in the street like me.
There are lots of organisations that have the skill set to maintain such historic aircraft, which lessens the burden on all ready overstretched personnel, who’s background may be aircraft maintenance, but have no experience with world war two aircraft, or props and piston engines, More so the external organisations do this year in year out, and keep the experience people, where the RAF personnel would have constant interruption due to their prior duties I would imagine.
Controversial opinion time. BBMF and Reds are barely relevant to the modern RAF and should be offloaded. BBMF moved to a civilian charity/organisation that is supported by the RAF in the same way the FAA and AAC has with their historic flights.
As for the reds, bin the Hawk t1s and move the money to an imbeded unit at Valley that can put together ad hoc flypast with T2s or Harvards as required and put on more impressive role demos at airshows with front line kit.
I had thought that the BBMF was a Charity, and was how it was looked after and paid for. BBMF may not be relevant to many, however it is relevant to us ‘older generation’. With regard to the Red Arrows, to be fair, I’m not really sure where they fit into the scheme of things anymore.