The utilitarian design and studs that hold everything together can feel like planes are built to last forever. Despite this illusion of longevity, a commercial airliner can expected to last about 27 years serve. But once they leave an airline’s fleet, there are still millions of dollars worth of parts hidden in their fuselages. Currently, a new report from CNBC disrupted what makes the rest of an aircraft so expensive.
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When an airline enters the market for a new aircraft, they are likely to spend between $90 million and $300 million on a brand new Airbus or Boeing aircraft. So they look to their old crafting vehicles to recoup some of the costs needed to upgrade and replace aging fleets.
After an airline has completed the purchase of one of its planes, it may try to find buyers using older planes, such as cargo fleets and firefighting companies. But, if this is not possible, it will be sent to the Arizona desert, where it joins hundreds of other aircraft waiting to fail. As it stands, Arizona’s graveyard currently holds more than 4,400 aircraft in various stages of damage.
As CNBC reports, the first stage to extracting as much value as possible from an old aircraft is to remove large money parts, such as engines and landing gear. Parts can be overhauled, rebuilt, and sold for reuse. Others can be used to train budding mechanics in the operation of aircraft engines.
CNBC says this aspect of the industry is booming thanks to delays in deliveries from new aircraft from both Airbus and Boeing, and an increasing number of flights to meet the growing travel demand around the world. As a result, more parts are being salvaged from older planes to keep newer models running for longer.
But how many parts could be salvaged from the 30-year-old plane? Well, according to CNBC, there could be a huge range. On a traditional narrow-body aircraft, you can only find 200 repairable and reusable parts. In contrast, a wide-body aircraft can have up to 2,000 parts that can be recovered and sold.
Sure, engines and landing gear are great value components, but CNBC says that almost every airplane part is expensive, so everything from flaps to wings Beverage trolley can also be fixed and float to other operators.
But it’s not just airlines that buy parts for old planes. Some components, such as chairs, can be reused and resold as seating for people’s offices and homes. The controls from the cockpit of some aircraft can also be removed and used to train the next generation of pilots.
Parts that cannot be salvaged and repaired for use on other aircraft will be recycled, discarded and recycled. In fact, as much as 95% of retired aircraft can be recycled — as whole parts or in the form of scrap metal and other materials.
Then the only thing left to do is tear the leftovers into pieces. After dismantling, the metal and non-metallic parts are separated for recycling, and the crushed hull is sold to a smelter to be melted down and turned into something completely new.
It’s a fascinating process and the need to do it all is due to the aging fleet of aircraft around the world. Supply chain shortages mean that the number of aircraft requiring maintenance is increasing, while the number of new parts required for such maintenance is decreasing. As such, used parts are much more valuable now than they were a few years ago.
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