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Hit through the cave to order flights due to Covid-19, advertising airlines have parked their fleets on the floor in some of the most remote locations in the world.
Last month, Australian airline Qantas said goodbye to its new Boeing 747 and sent it on a last flight out of Sydney in California’s Mojave Desert.
The fleet, according to one report, had transported more than 250 million other people over nearly a century of service, adding Queen Elizabeth II and all Australian Olympic groups since 1984. The airline also announced that it had made the decision to purchase its fleet. A380 super jumbos. Mojave Desert until at least 2023.
Qantas said they planned to withdraw the plane in six months, but they brought the date forward because the coronavirus pandemic had “decimated foreigners around the world.”
The pandemic has forced a large number of advertising airlines to lock up their fleets in a handful of vast garage amenities around the world, some in remote, arid deserts.
These options are “boneyards” of airlines or retirement centers. Here, the planes are parked, or stored, for long periods of time, then put back into service or demolished to sell their parts.
Commercial airlines consider it less expensive to park their planes in a garage than at an airport.
Aircraft can be stored for a long time in those places. Experts say airlines would sometimes have to incur a monthly charge of approximately $5,000 (3,882 euros) to the aircraft in a “long-term garage program.”
“Some aircraft are stored for a long time before locating a new tenant, some are stored and then used for parts, some are discarded,” Ian Petchenik, Flight Tracking FlightRadar24 told me.
Some of the most popular personal garage services are found in vast expanses of arid deserts in countries such as the United States, Spain and Australia.
Alice Springs in Central Australia and Mojave in eastern California, for example, are two main places. Other well-known garage spots are located in Marana, Arizona and Roswell, New Mexico.
“Deserts will offer two key elements: giant spaces of open flat terrain and a climate that curbs corrosion of steel parts,” Petchenik says. The low humidity and the small amount of aerosols and atmospheric waste in those rooms buy planes for a long time.
American writer and former New York Times columnist Joe Sharkey recalls his at a former CIA airfield that became advertising in Marana, in the desert, about 24 km north of Tucson, Arizona.
“It was disconcerting to see the bright tails of many advertising planes shining in the sun in the distance. All the planes closed the windows and engines,” Sharkey said.
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Aviation experts say the pandemic has forced more planes to these “boneyards” than any development in recent history. Long haul airplanes are also being prematurely retired. Last week British Airways, the world’s largest operator of the jumbo jets, announced it would retire all of its 31 Boeing 747s, 10% of its total fleet, ahead of a planned phasing out in 2024.
In April, more than 14,000 passenger aircraft, two-thirds of the global fleet, landed worldwide, compared to fewer than 1,900 aircraft earlier this year, according to Cirium, a London-based aviation research and knowledge service. Company.
About 7.5 million flights were cancelled between January and July and the airline has already suffered profit losses of up to $84 billion this year, according to the International Air Transport Association (IATA).
“This is the largest grounding of advertising aircraft, caused by the virtual closure of the global passenger network due to restrictions resulting from the pandemic and the reduction of the airlift request for passengers,” Rob Morris, suggestion leader at Cirium, told me in an email. .
Airlines have faced a sharp drop in traffic on global occasions in the past.
Analysts said, more than 13% of the advertising fleet landed after the 9/11 attacks and the subsequent Gulf War in 2001. Passenger traffic plummeted after the global currency crisis of 2008, with 11% of the advertising fleet stranded in garage services in mid-2009.
“But the proportion stored has never been the proportion we saw in 2020, illustrating the magnitude of the airline crisis around the world,” Morris said.
Delta Airlines parked its fleet in a “cemetery” in Arizona, and American Airlines flew its planes to a former army base that moved to a garage in New Mexico.
Many of the 371 Boeing 737 Max aircraft were moved to garage facilities worldwide after the aircraft stopped last March due to protection concerns.
Singapore Airlines has stationed 29 aircraft in Alice Springs, Australia, an airline spokesman told me. The Airbus 380 appears to be one of the maximum impacted fleets.
“The A380 fleet is entering long-term storage due to unprecedented downturn in passenger demand,” says Mr Petchenik.
As the pandemic enters its eighth month, many aircraft have returned to service as airlines resume their flights.
About 10,000 passenger planes in the skies on July 17, flying about 34,800 flights.
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But according to the Cirium, some 7,600 aircraft, representing more than a third of the world’s fleet, are still on the ground.
To find out how dark air travel is still, this: Singapore Airlines, one of the world’s leading airlines, operates only 30 of its 220-plane organization fleet, while another 30 of its passenger aircraft are used to carry only cargo.
The fate of the plane in the amenities remains uncertain. Some of them there. The last option is to get rid of the aircraft and sell the parts.
“There is a valuable steel detail in the engines that comes at some price, however, in many cases today, the price of aircraft waste is minimal to the disposal charge, especially given environmental laws,” Morris says.
“As a result, many obsolete aircraft may be in inventory for a long era of time.”
Others are on duty.
“These aircraft require maintenance and sometimes a series of verification flights before they return to service. Engines and systems are powered on to ensure an immediate return to service,” petchenik says.
More than not, however, the airline’s “boneyards” evoke visions of abandoned aircraft, which will never return to service.
Mr. Sharkey met with a senior executive in Arizona who spoke about his experiences.
“A 747 came in not long ago with the newspapers and magazines all stacked neatly in the racks, and the pillows and blankets on the seats,” the manager told him..
“It’s strange, like a ghost ship.”