The Shuttleworth Trust has a Bleriot XI aircraft that is airworthy. This is not the first one I have seen because I saw the one Eric Presten kept in Sonoma, but I never got the chance to see that one fly. The Festival of Flight show at Old Warden had ideal conditions for flying the old planes and the Bleriot came out. They limit it to flying up and down the runway. No messing around with turns. Instead, they hop along the runway, turn around on the ground at the end and then come back.

It is not an overpowered aircraft, and I did wonder whether it would get airborne or not. It would bounce up off a bump and then fly along for a while, before settling back down. I don’t know how much they push the performance given that this is an extremely rare and valuable aircraft so maybe it could do more. However, watching it I did find myself wondering about what would make someone want to take something like this across the English Channel.