The beloved Martin Mars water bomber on Sproat Lake will be making its final flight later this year.
The province announced today it’s committed a quarter-million-dollars to transport the airplane from Port Alberni to Victoria. There, it will become a permanent display at the BC Aviation Museum.
Transporting the nearly 80-year-old plane will be done in phases, including its final flight from Sproat Lake to the Saanich Inlet. There, it will be loaded on a trailer and transported to the museum by the Victoria airport.
The plane was last used in 2015 to fight forest fires in BC, Alberta and the USA. It will take approximately 10,000 hours of prep and flight retraining over the next six months to move the plane to its new home.
A final date for the move has not been set, but the province expects it will be done by the end of this year.
