Home Wanted For Wreckage Of Lockerbie Pan Am Jumbo

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Home Wanted For Wreckage Of Lockerbie Pan Am Jumbo
SkyNews
By Sky News SkyNews - 26 minutes ago

The wreckage of the Pan Am jet that was blown apart over Lockerbie two
decades ago needs a new home.
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The fuselage of the downed jumbo jet may end up as a museum piece.

Fragments of the Pan Am flight 103 that were retrieved from the fields
around the Dumfriesshire town after the outrage in 1988 are stored at
the Air Accident Investigations Branch (AAIB) headquarters in
Farnborough.

The wreckage stands around 10 metres tall, supported by scaffolding,
inside an aircraft hangar. It's pieced together, jigsaw-style, as a
reconstruction of the Maid of the Seas passenger plane.

The structure has been kept as a key piece of the technical evidence
that helped convict a Libyan agent of carrying out the atrocity.

Now, with Abdel Basset ali Mohmed al Megrahi approaching the end of
his appeal process, the remains of Pan Am 103 are due for removal.

So what do you do with a bombed jumbo jet? There's no shortage of
offers.

Glasgow's Museum of Transp

ort wants a piece - or two - to add to its existing Lockerbie
exhibition.

It cites reasons of historical significance, although it has stressed
that it would be guided by the families of disaster victims on whether
or not they felt it was appropriate to publicly display the remnants
of Britain's worst terrorist atrocity.

According to Jim Swire, whose daughter Flora was among the 270
victims, they needn't worry.

"It would be a good thing to have it all in one place and a place that
offers hope of longevity for the sanctity of the material they're
displaying" he says - "so the public can have access to it long-term".

Others who have expressed an interest include the US National
Transportation Safety Board, the American equivalent of Britain's
AAIB.

They want the wreckage for research purposes but they'll face
competition from Cranfield University in Bedfordshire.

It runs courses in air accident investigation and the remains of the
Lockerbie jet would provide a unique educational tool.

Who gets what will be a matter for Pan Am's insurers, who own the
plane's wreckage.

They face a delicate decision over what is the physical reminder of
the Lockerbie disaster, its scale and its suffering.