Norm Etheridge has a flight to catch at Hamilton International Airport.

It won't be the 404 to Moncton or the 533 to Winnipeg. Actually, on Tuesday morning his plane won't be going anywhere at all. It will land in the same place it takes off.

Etheridge, 86, will be riding on the rumbling, shaking, rattling and rolling Mynarski Memorial Lancaster, just like he did on its inaugural flight 25 years before.

"The Lancaster was never built for comfort," says the man who oversaw the decade-long project to restore Hamilton's most famous plane.

The big black bomber, one of the city's most well-known icons, has reached the age of 25 years in its refurbished life.

The plane kept at the Hamilton Warplane Heritage is one of only two flying Lancs in the world. The other is in England.

As Etheridge says, they were not built to last. They were built to drop bombs on Germany-held Europe.

"They asked me to rebuild the Lancaster but they didn't tell me it was all in little bits."

But he was not deterred. He travelled the country and went to England to find parts. To build four functioning engines, they needed to rob parts from 22. The undercarriage had to be replaced. He found one in England, and had it flown back to Hamilton on a Hercules plane.

Hundreds of volunteers took part in the restoration over the years. If they had been paid, the costs would have been in the millions of dollars, said Etheridge.