FUMBLE: SPITFIRE SALE CRASHES AND BURNS

Veritas Team Huddle Compiled By Jack Wojcicki
Here’s the story: a group of volunteers at the air force museum in Comox, B.C. have spent thousands of hours and thousands of dollars (a lot of it their own money, the rest coming from grants and donations from government, groups and individuals) on trying to restore a vintage World War II Spitfire fighter to flying shape. But the air force, which owns the plane, decided to up and sell it to a private organization called Vintage Wings of Canada (which has restored numerous old planes to air-worthiness), for the token price of a dollar. The volunteers are, predictably, outraged. The military said in an e-mail that “after eight years of work … the project to restore and maintain the aircraft in the long term was not feasible,” and noted that they sold the aircraft “in order to see the project actually come to fruition.” The Vintage Wings folks are defensive: “There have been a few people who have been relentless their negative spin on this,” said vice-president Tim Leslie. The volunteers say they were blindsided: “We would like to know just what went on,” said Tom Quibell, a 79 year-old aircraft engineer who has been working on the Spitfire for the past seven years. “Every time we asked, we were told it had nothing to do with us. It was like the work we did means nothing.” The Veritas team feels his pain, and agrees that this was a major fumble by both the military and by Vintage Wings, for not managing communications with the volunteers from the get-go. Both should have made careful and concerted efforts to ensure that the key stakeholder group was well-informed as to what was happening and why – and, they should also have made the effort in their public communication to pay tribute to the dedicated folks who had put so much time and effort into their labour of love. Ultimately, they all share the same goal of getting the bird back in the air again – too bad their communications weren’t as air-worthy as well.