Hawaii Mars to leave in August
Jun 14, 2024 | 9:19 AM
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Mark your Calendars for Saturday August 10th. That’s the day the Hawaii Mars is scheduled to fly out of the Alberni Valley for the last time.
But that could change slightly according to Wayne Coulson as the BC Aviation Museum is arranging for the Snowbirds to fly alongside the bomber for part of its final flight.
“They’re trying to coordinate it with the Snowbirds and so we set a date of August 10, but it could be August 12, it could slide one or two days if that’s what the BC Aviation Museum wants to do,” he said. “We’re not coordinating, it’s the BC Aviation Museum, so we’re trying to facilitate those folks and whatever works best for them to receive the airplane.”
The Hawaii Mars will go back to its Sproat Lake anchorage on July 2nd, and will been seen and heard doing readiness flights around town through July.
Coulson said the 80-year old plane will fly over many of the communities it has served over the past 50 years as it heads to it’s final resting place at the BC Aviation museum in Victoria
“We’ve been working with Transport Canada and they’ve been pretty flexible if we wanted to take it up to Campbell River and do a bit of a fly around the island with it. I know the crew would love that and so people could see overhead and say goodbye to it and I think what we would do is we would post the flight plan and the time it would be so people could schedule if they wanted to watch fly overhead at 500 feet but we’ll probably take it up to Campbell River, Courtenay, Nanaimo and Duncan, fly up the coast over the communities,” he said.
Coulson Aviation has been flooded with applications from people wanting to cruise the lake on the world’s largest flying boat for $5000 a seat, and they’ll also be offering tours of the plane at a lower cost before it leaves.
(Photo courtesy Coulson Aviation)
