Did you know the disposal of old planes is a thriving multibillion dollar business?
Or that it’s recently spawned a dangerous shadow market in counterfeit aircraft parts?
Hop on board and buckle up for takeoff as we ask exactly what happens to old airplanes?
You might wonder why airplanes need to die in the first place. After all,
they’re made of metal, right – can’t they just be maintained, theoretically forever?
Not quite. Most modern airliners have an in-built lifespan of around 25-30 years.
What usually brings them down in the end is far more insidious than regular wear and tear.
An aircraft’s lifespan is usually measured in so-called ‘pressurisation cycles’.
What does that mean? Every time an aircraft takes off it has to pressurise its cabin so
passengers and crew can breathe comfortably at high altitudes. This pressurisation naturally puts
substantial stress on the frame of the aircraft, which inevitably over time leads to metal fatigue.
Over many thousands of flying hours, this fatigue can become deadly. In 1988,
a flight attendant named Clarabelle Lansing tragically lost her life
when an aging Aloha Airlines Boeing 737 suffered explosive mid-air decompression.
Boeing 747’s are rated for 35,000 pressurisation cycles,
which typically works out around 150,000 flight hours. Interestingly, nippy short haul planes
age faster than bigger long-haul jets for this very reason. Short haulers necessarily
pressurise and and de-pressurise multiple times a day, which accelerates their decline.
Carriers, especially the big famous passenger airlines,
don’t want to wait until metal fatigue becomes problematic.
So around halfway through the plane’s rated lifespan, a thorough assessment is made as
to whether it’s worth more in parts than as a working airliner. Often a newer, more
fuel-efficient model has become available that makes more sense for the airline to trade in for,
It’s certainly not unheard of for jets approaching the autumn of their lives
to move onto exciting new things. They might be sold on to countries with less
stringent regulations and run into the ground, metaphorically at least.
Big Boeing 747s often end up being refitted as freight carriers, Smaller planes can wind up
working in highly specialist niches, like the dutch workhorse Fokker 100s which are so robust
they do a roaring trade supplying remote mining outposts in the Australian outback.
Some lucky planes end up as cherished museum pieces, like the few remaining Concordes. Or
refitted into lavish sky palaces for the likes of Hip-Hop star Drake, or shady oligarch Roman
Abramovich, who jets around in a private pimped-out Boeing 767 named ‘Bandit’.
This is rare though. Most planes – almost all planes, eventually – are broken down for parts.
The volumes and prices associated with the airline parts trade can be staggering, with
the global market for secondhand plane components projected to be worth some $6 billion in 2022.
This market is so lively it’s spawned its own class
of dedicated investment outfits and even specialist hedge funds.
Even more astonishingly, the airline spare parts industry is locked in constant
battle with counterfeiters, who supply a hungry worldwide market with cheap knock-off components.
It’s believed that as many as 2% of all spare airliner parts on the market today
are counterfeit, with obvious and terrifying safety implications.
A Paris start-up, called SafeFlights,
has been trying to use blockchain certification to stamp out this decidedly dodgy practice.
So, why is the spares market so lucrative?
A modern aircraft is made up of some 350,000 parts. Most of the
value – upwards of 75% – derives from the engines alone. Airlines typically
prefer to replace a failing component, like an engine fan blade, than attempt a risky repair.
So defunct planes essentially become moneyspinning organ banks for their airworthy brethren.
There’s serious cash to be made here. For instance, just the winglets on a
retired Boeing 737 can fetch as much as $US650,000 on the second-hand market.
And with roughly 11,000 airline retirements scheduled to take place over the coming decade,
you can start to see why dead planes are such big business.
So where are these massive beasts stashed while they’re broken down for parts?
Storage airports – also known as graveyards, still more evocatively as ‘boneyards’ – are essentially
vast open-air parking lots. For planes. The biggest are in the southwestern United States,
where an arid local climate and bountiful cheap land helps stave off rusting and decay on these
extremely valuable assets. The largest in the world, Davis-Monthan Air Force Base inArizona,
babysits some 4,000 military aircraft, among them F-16 fighter jets,
combat helicopters and colossal Lockheed C-5 Galaxy transport aircraft.
As for civilian planes, Mojave Air & Space Port is the proverbial daddy,
with 1,000 or so dormant aircraft shimmering silently in the desert haze.
On arrival at these facilities, planes are cleaned to remove any salt that could lead
to corrosion. The fuel tanks are typically drained and flushed with lubricant, and the tyres dressed
up in a thick film of specialist Mylar to stave off deterioration in the merciless heat.
When the last valuable component has been stripped out and sold to the highest bidder,
whatever remains is sold on for scrap.
The fuselage of a Boeing 747 is said to be worth about $43,000 scrap value,
and boneyards are incentivised to move quickly at this stage. This is because
the moment an airline is decommissioned it’s considered industrial waste and subject to
local environmental statutes. This partly explains why European boneyards – like at Kemble in the UK,
or Tarbes in France – are so much smaller than their US counterparts. For one thing,
Europe’s climate is more unforgiving. As is it’s regulatory framework.
Still, there are some more imaginative uses
for old planes that entrepreneurial types come up with from time to time.
For instance, a New York architecture studio called LOT-EK has proposed buying up 200 cheap
Boing 727 and 737 fuselages and turning them into a library in Mexico. That’s not actually built,
yet, but plenty of airframes enjoy a fulfilling second life.
Take this up-cycled 747 plonked a parking lot beside Sweden’s Arlanda Airport.
It’s a smart hotel, with 25 rooms, and a plush honeymoon suite up in the cockpit.
There’s also a budget hostel, stashed backpacker-style in the economy cabin.
This kindergarten in Rustavi, Georgia was repurposed from a retired Yakovlev 42 aircraft.
In Zurich, a Soviet-era Ilyushin Il-14 has been transformed into an upscale restaurant,
while this decommissioned Douglas DC-3 in Taupo, New Zealand,
serves as an outlet of fast food giant McDonalds. We’re lovin’ it.
Internal plane components such as drinks trolleys have been upcycled by aspirational German design
firm SkyPak into snazzy closets. California-based Motoart studio remakes bigger aircraft components
like engine housings or segments of fuselage into upscale office furniture,
with a blue-chip client list including Microsoft and, aptly enough, Boeing.
Perhaps the strangest second life for any recycled plane is
this former Malaysia Airlines 747, which was deliberately sunk off the coast of Bahrain
and transformed into an artificial reef and one-off scuba diving destination.
Such imaginative re-use is to be encouraged, so long as it’s done sensitively.
The boneyards of the world are rapidly filling up with unwanted 747s,
a trend set to accelerate with ravages of the COVID-19 pandemic on the travel industry.
Eco-conscious aviation industry body AFRA, the Aircraft Fleet Recycling Association,
reckons 70% of aircraft parts are recyclable today. It plans to get this figure up to 95%
with promised improvements in technology and responsible disposal practices.
Well, anything’s better than just winging it.
What do you think? Can you come up with a better uses for the thousands of aircraft
currently sitting idle in the boneyards of the world? Let us know in the comments,
and don’t forget to subscribe for more plane-speaking tech content.