However, president Bob De La Hunty said it would be some time before the museum reopened to the public.

In August, HARS voluntarily closed its premises at the Illawarra Regional Airport to allow work on the facility to be completed and have fire-safety systems installed.

Three weeks later, Shellharbour City Council issued an order on the facility that restricted access into the building to HARS members involved in construction work only.

A council spokeswoman said HARS had now been provided with an  interim occupation certificate for hangars one, two and three.

This allowed restricted access to areas that still required construction to be completed.

Mr De La Hunty said HARS was still waiting on fire engineers to complete a final design and the interim occupation certificate meant members could access the building on a restricted basis for specific work.

A  management plan was in place, but a reopening of the museum was still some time away, he said.

Meantime, the HARS entity Historical Aircraft Projects (HAP) has decided to cease conducting maintenance in the wake of a Civil Aviation Safety Authority audit.

Mr De La Hunty said HAP was a separate entity that looked after engineering and the CASA audit was a routine audit.

‘‘There is no issue, it is just we are restricting all works except for construction,’’ he said.

‘‘We are limiting the amount of work we are doing while the construction work is forging on – it makes sense to do that.

‘‘We can’t work on all the aeroplanes, that is the bottom line.’’

How the shutdown would affect the popular Wings Over The Illawarra event remained to be seen, Mr De La Hunty said.

‘‘It is a council operation and we’ll participate in whatever way they would like us to,’’ he said.

The 2014 event is set down for May 4. An estimated 15,000 people attended this year’s event.

A number of HARS aircraft including the Super Constellation and the Catalina will be in action at Warbirds Downunder 2013 air show at Temora early next month.

Meantime, Shellharbour City Council has agreed to invest the $1.12 million in insurance it will receive after the airport terminal building burnt down in May.

The money is to be invested in an interest-accruing account and will be used to replace the lost infrastructure at the airport. 

Shellharbour councillors have requested the council’s general manager, Michael Willis, prepare a report setting out the best options for  rebuilding an asset at the airport as a matter of priority. 

The council has received  advice from the police that the results of investigations into the cause of the fire were inconclusive due to the fire’s intense heat. The council’s claims manager’s findings were similar, in that while there was some suspicion regarding its cause, there was no evidence to confirm how it started or who lit it.