An aircraft garage facility in Central Australia is now so complete that it has had to look for more space.
Many carriers did not have enough passengers to justify their flights by the pandemic and chose to buy their aircraft.
Asia Pacific Airline Storage retail points 94 aircraft in Alice Springs and will buy more in Southeast Queensland.
Analysts say this is a sign of airlines’ difficulty.
Singapore Airlines and Cathay Pacific and their subsidiaries inventory aircraft in Alice Springs, as do Fiji Air and Cebu Pacific.
Asia Pacific Airline Storage (APAS) has 16 more locations on the site, however, they are already reserved by existing customers.
The site has a local landmark in the remote city of about 25,000 people.
The company intends to expand the facility to space its 110 existing locations to accommodate between 160 and 200 aircraft.
Until the extension is ready, APAS will need to locate more areas elsewhere.
“To take care of some additional garage needs, we’ve started storing planes in Wellcamp in Toowoomba,” Tom Vincent, the company’s leading executive, told the BBC.
At the moment, there are two aircraft in the new facilities in southeast Queensland, but they are expected to arrive more this week.
Desert situations are, according to brands and airlines, preferable for aircraft storage, as it is less difficult to protect against corrosion in dry weather.
During storage, the aircraft must go through a rigorous maintenance program.
“People get the wrong idea that you just park a plane and stay there until you reactivate it,” Vincent said.
In fact, APAS now has 70 workers who travel well until airlines want them back.
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Vincent said he was still hoping to expand the facility, but the pandemic increased demand.
And there has been a very slow network of returning aircraft, the vast majority of them have entered storage instead of leaving.
The facility is not a “cemetery” of the airline where old aircraft are stripped of reusable components, however, Vincent warned that this could be just a component of the business if the industry continues to face headwinds.
An industry analyst said the expansion of the facility was a transparent indication of the demanding situations airlines face with the Covid-19 pandemic.
Flightglobal Asia editor Greg Waldron said the schedules were for Singapore Airlines and Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific, either of which uses the facility.
No airline has domestic flights, which will probably be the first to reopen, he said.
“In any case like Cathay Pacific, where there is no such domestic market, in an incredibly complicated situation,” he said.
However, he said air shipping operations remain strong and many airlines will remain afloat.
The International Air Transport Association (IATA) has reduced its traffic forecast by 2020.
The deal now says it expects traffic to be 66% below the point in 2019.
IATA estimates that it will be at least 2024 before air reaches prepandemic levels.
“I don’t think there’s a transparent way to get back to normal. There are many industry prospects that going back to pre-covid grades will take many years,” Vincent said.