Aircraft maintenance students at Tarrant County College (TCC) in Texas will be able to work on a vintage Gulfstream GII, thanks to the generosity of oil industry executive Charles Palmer, who had operated the aircraft since acquiring it from the Halliburton Group in 2004. As it reached the end of its useful life, the GII had been facing the prospect of being scrapped this year, but Palmer, also a philanthropist, decided it could still deliver some value in helping train a new generation of business aviation mechanics.

One of the many people who did not want to see this aircraft dismantled was Chuck Swartz of aircraft sales company Swartz Aviation Group. He had worked on the GII since the early 1980s, when he was providing avionics support at K-C Aviation in Dallas. Instead of consigning the aircraft to a junkyard or watching it get turned into beer cans, Swartz proposed that it could be donated to a museum, fire department or school. After Palmer spoke with his chief pilot, Jerry Harbour, and Swartz Aviation Group’s James Robertson (who is studying for his A&P certificate at the school), it was decided that the aircraft would go to TCC.

On March 27 at 9 a.m., the GII made its last flight from Ellington Field in Houston to Alliance Airport in Fort Worth, home of TCC’s aviation education program. Before the facility was sold to the school, Bell Helicopter held its research center in the same buildings. TCC school board members watched as the aircraft, flown by first officer Harbour and captained by Space Shuttle pilot Ken Cockrell, safely landed at Alliance Airport.

Since TCC’s aviation program focuses on aviation maintenance technology, students will have the GII’s avionics system in front of them while they learn about it. According to Swartz, most schools work on pistons, but TCC students will be able to learn from a GII.