A piece of aviation history is alive and well in Vulcan County.

On a rural property in the Herronton area lives a Fokker F28-1000 passenger jet that hasn't flown since 2002.

Its owner, Jesse Millington, has been working on restoring it for about four years now.

He's long been a fan of vintage cars, and he sees the step up to airplane restoration as a natural progression.

"For many years I've been into cars, aircraft, trains, basically anything with wheels. It just kind of happened that going from playing with the toy die-cast ones to being fortunate enough to get to where I am, I ended up being able to get the big ones. It's a little bit different, but it's all relative in the end."

Millington acquired the plane through his involvement with the Time Air Historical Society, a non-profit dedicated to preserving Canadian aviation history.

Millington and three other members took the plane apart for transport and reassembled it with great care.

The society has acquired a few aircraft of their own and they hope to establish a museum and event centre in Lethbridge.

Though his Fokker F28 isn't part of the society's official acquisitions, Millington has preservation in mind.

He, like many other Canadians, harbours some nostalgia for the now-defunct Canadian Airlines, which was absorbed into Air Canada in the early 2000s.

"For me, it'll be a tribute to all the people who worked at Canadian. It was a big part of my growing up, seeing all the airlines, I loved Canadian Airlines and Regional. It'll be great to preserve the aircraft because finding something that still has the original paint and is in as good a shape as it is, it's very rare."

He doesn't plan to get the plane in flying condition, instead aiming to preserve the original look and feel of the craft, which served Canadians for several decades.

More information on the Time Air Historical Society can be found on their Facebook page.