Aircraft end of life
Discussion
What happens to an aircraft when its reached the end of its life and what decides this?
Does for example, a 737 get to 20 years old and due to the flights hours have to be retired?
Then is it cut up and any useable parts reused/cycled?
There must be hundreds of planes retired each year.
Also I wish I had room for something like this - http://www.airplanehome.com/ - I live on the end of Leeds/Bradford airport. Might put a cheeky bid into Jet2 for one of their aging fleet. Make a nice den for the kids.
Does for example, a 737 get to 20 years old and due to the flights hours have to be retired?
Then is it cut up and any useable parts reused/cycled?
There must be hundreds of planes retired each year.
Also I wish I had room for something like this - http://www.airplanehome.com/ - I live on the end of Leeds/Bradford airport. Might put a cheeky bid into Jet2 for one of their aging fleet. Make a nice den for the kids.
Edited by MonkeyBusiness on Friday 17th February 19:00
Aircraft have a working life based on the fatigue of the airframe. Sometimes it can be extended by replacing structural components like wing spars and sometimes examination can show it hasn't fatigued as much as expected. When they reach their end of life, they are taken to an aircraft breakers and stripped of anything useful, like avionics, engines and other bits that can be used for spares, and then they are cut up. The aluminium is recycled.
Nickyboy said:
Some end up HERE to be used for parts and then recycled. I shall be visiting here in October.
After I posted my question I went off to find the answers and came across the company that owns that facility.I find it strange that (like a car I suppose) in the final years of a planes life, it will be passed around freight companies before the final flight to the scappers.
For something that surely needs to be immaculately maintained, who gives the final 'you ain't flying no more' speech? I imagine there are a few planes that really shouldn't be in the air.
MonkeyBusiness said:
After I posted my question I went off to find the answers and came across the company that owns that facility.
I find it strange that (like a car I suppose) in the final years of a planes life, it will be passed around freight companies before the final flight to the scappers.
For something that surely needs to be immaculately maintained, who gives the final 'you ain't flying no more' speech? I imagine there are a few planes that really shouldn't be in the air.
I think it goes by the amount of take offs/landings and flying hours. The structure is designed to last for so manyI find it strange that (like a car I suppose) in the final years of a planes life, it will be passed around freight companies before the final flight to the scappers.
For something that surely needs to be immaculately maintained, who gives the final 'you ain't flying no more' speech? I imagine there are a few planes that really shouldn't be in the air.
There's an article about it here: http://www.airspacemag.com/need-to-know/NEED-lifec...
MonkeyBusiness said:
I find it strange that (like a car I suppose) in the final years of a planes life, it will be passed around freight companies before the final flight to the scappers.
For something that surely needs to be immaculately maintained, who gives the final 'you ain't flying no more' speech? I imagine there are a few planes that really shouldn't be in the air.
They are maintained to the same standards as passenger jets in my experience.For something that surely needs to be immaculately maintained, who gives the final 'you ain't flying no more' speech? I imagine there are a few planes that really shouldn't be in the air.
G600 said:
They are maintained to the same standards as passenger jets in my experience.
This is my understanding. Usually they get shunted off for freighting because it's too expensive to retrim the interior to make it look modern, or if the engines don't meet noise regulations for flying to city airports any more. I would say that a relatively small percentage of any given airliner type end up as freighhters. And that is happening less and less now as airliner manufacturers make brand new freighter versions of their ranges. Certain types of airliner have been more popular as freighter conversions than others.
In the 1980s a reasonable number of DC-8s were converted for the like of DHL. The DC-10 and 747 have also been popular and on the smaller scale the BAe 146 and 757 also popular. But brand new freighter 747s and ND-11s helped surpress the conversion market in recent years.
The break up of the Soviet Union also released hundreds of ex Aeroflot Ilyushins, Tupolevs and Antonovs into the commercial market which also has done a lot to hold down western airliner conversion p5trogrammes.
Back in the 50s, 60s and 70s it was far more common with lots of older piston engined and turboprop powered airliners ending their lives as feight haulers.
In the 1980s a reasonable number of DC-8s were converted for the like of DHL. The DC-10 and 747 have also been popular and on the smaller scale the BAe 146 and 757 also popular. But brand new freighter 747s and ND-11s helped surpress the conversion market in recent years.
The break up of the Soviet Union also released hundreds of ex Aeroflot Ilyushins, Tupolevs and Antonovs into the commercial market which also has done a lot to hold down western airliner conversion p5trogrammes.
Back in the 50s, 60s and 70s it was far more common with lots of older piston engined and turboprop powered airliners ending their lives as feight haulers.
G600 said:
I don't know what % of the market they take up but over the past year I've worked on several 757 and A300 freighters, a couple of them quite recent conversions so they are still being done, the company using them doesn't have anything Russian in their fleet either.
That's the point.Modern airliners have been built on the whole in far larger numbers than the airliners of yesteryear - so even if a lower percentage of them are being converted to freighters, there will. still be a REALTIVELY large number of freighter conversions floating about.
If you look at the really old prop liners such as the Douglas DC-4, DC-6, Constellation, Britannia etc, quite a few of these were converted to freighters. This was mainly because when they were retired early to make way for the new pure jets, they often still had a relatively high number of airframe hours remaining. They were still too "new" to scrap.
The first generation jet airliners were also retired fairly early in their airframe lives because of the fuel hungry nature of their engines - especially after 1973. Not that many of these early jets became freighters because even with low airframe hours, their engines were still too uneconomic for freighting. A fuel hungry and uneconomic passenger jet is still a fuel hungry freighter.
The second generation of jets (the turbofan powered versions of the 707 and DC-8) fared better - especially the DC-8. Those DC-8s which were re-engined with CFM-56 high bypass turbofans in the 80s became very desirable as freighters and there are still a few of them being used today.
Since the 1980s most passenger airliners tend to see out their lives as passenger airliners. The airliner manufacturers are more prepared to build new freighter versions rather than convert older passenger aircraft. Finally, a surprisng number of ordinary passenger flights will cary non-passenger related freight in their holds. I remember back in 1981 flying in a B Cal DC-10 to Houston and we had a Mercedes limo in the cargo hold.
There's some very interesting pics on this site: http://www.civilianaviation.co.uk/forum/viewtopic....
That thread is from Kemble and shows aircraft in various states of destruction.
That thread is from Kemble and shows aircraft in various states of destruction.
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