The story begins

During mid 1990, two swedish enthusiasts came up with the idea of preserving a Caravelle in flyable condition. This would be possible as the Swedish Airforce still operated two Caravelle III as Signal Intelligence platforms. The technical development made big steps forward since 1971 when Caravelle joined the military fleet and the technical equipment is better, more advanced and don't require the same amount of space nowadays. The Airforce were by the time looking for replacement aircrafts and the modern Gulfstream IV were choosen for this purpose and delivery was set to late 1990. During the autumn 1997, Michael Sanz and Ola Carlsson, decided to form an association around one of the Caravelles. Together with some other Caravellefans the association "Bevara Caravellen UB" (Save the Caravelle - Under Construction). This was a temporary name which soon was changed to the more international Le Caravelle Club, a name giving a hint of the manufacturers origin. Ola Carlsson was selected as the first president. Talks began with the Airforce and the Airforce Museum and from the very beginning great enthusiasm were showed from all parties. However we soon learned that we were not the only ones with ideas for the aircraft. The technical scool in Nyköping as well as the one in Västerås wanted an airframe for training purpose. Even worse, the Airforce Fireschool in Halmstad wanted an instructional airframe.

In 1998 the Airforce ended its Caravelle operations. First aircraft to be retired was "851" which were transferred to the Airforce Museum in Linköping. The future plans for "852" were now focused at the Fireschool. The plans of applying for permission to train civil firefighters required an instructional airframe. Earlier discussions about a Tupolev 154 was terminated as the costs were to high. Suddenly the airforce had a surplus Caravelle which could be delivered directly to Halmstad and they already owned it! Major setback for us and we had to restart the whole project.

In this forced situation we suddenly found ourselfs promising that we would arrange a replacement aircraft to the school. A destiny of "our" beauty becoming a firetrainer - we could not let that happen!!! After many long negotiations with the Airforce we reached an agreement and "852" were saved, at least for now.