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Re: Civil A-4s

Posted by Jim on Wed Mar 17, 2004 10:13:20 AM

In reply top ATSI A-4s posted by Ryan Harris on Tue Mar 16, 2004 12:37:57 PM

The situation with the various A-4s on the FAA register goes much like this:

Malaysia purchased 88 A-4Cs and A-4Ls but was only able to afford to refurbish 40 of them (in the mid 1980s). The remaining 48 remained in the Arizona desert. In November 1997, 34 of them were registered. to Aviation Technologies Ltd of Sparks, Nevada, but have remained stored at Dross Metal Industries? (DMI) yard on the edge of Davis Monthan AFB. All of these have the suffix AT to their registrations. One A-4L (148446/N130AT) was registered in April 2003 to a company registered in Delaware, reregistered in November to another in Oregon and cancelled in January 04. Although in the same sequence, it is not known to have been a part of the Malaysian batch.

ATSI have 9 A-4Ns and 3 TA-4Js at Williams AFB for various types of threat simulation, adversary and training tasks. They all have the suffix WL to their N-numbers (the old tailcode for Williams) e.g N250WL. They also have eight (the last time I looked) further reservations reserved. Sale and delivery of the 17 ex-RNZAF aircraft has been delayed, seemingly because the US State Department is dragging the chain.

BAE Systems have four A-4Ns with FS suffixes (e.g N434FS). These are based at Wittmund in Germany.

There are about four TA-4Js in private hands that have or may have flown in recent years. The Collings Foundation are working on theirs and Capitol Warbirds have several in the pipeline. No single-seaters are currently airworthy with private individuals, although I am prepared to be

Hope this clears things up. I would love to know why the DMI aircraft were ever registered as I don?t think any will fly again.

Jim


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