General manager Peter Horton said he believed it would be uneconomic to fly any of the ex-RNZAF Skyhawks.
"You can fly anything if you have got enough money," he said.
"The economic thing to do, if you wanted to get a flying Skyhawk, would be to buy one in the States, where they have many stored in proper conditions in the desert."
He doubted the New Zealand Skyhawks had been properly stored and suggested their engines might be beyond repair by now.
Mr Horton added that while the airframes were very old, the New Zealand Skyhawks contained electronic weapons packages that were modern and could not be removed from the planes.
This would probably mean the US would not be keen on having them flying again.
Warbirds, who maintain a big livery of aircraft in South Auckland, would be keen to have a static Skyhawk in their hangers as a representative model of an RNZAF plane.
Mr Horton said he was sure that now the sale deal was falling through, other major New Zealand museums would want Skyhawks for static display.
He knew several large Australian museums would want them as well, partly as the RNZAF Skyhawks were, for a long period, based in New South Wales.
Warbirds, and the others, would not want to buy them.
"We've been asking for years for one for free, and we'll get the letter out again and send it in," Mr Horton said."
Full article here, some entertaining uniformed comments posted below on the Stuff.co.nz page
