CNN
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We’ve all seen the pictures.
Row upon row of derelict aircraft very slowly rusting away in the desert.
Aircraft graveyards might be spectacular, but they’re just a small cog in the fascinating industry that takes care of commercial aircraft once they’re taken out of service.
As soon as an airliner is approaching the end of its operational life, a whole financial and industrial ecosystem, spanning from hedge funds to specialized recycling firms, springs into action.
Courtesy Air Salvage
Air Salvage International makes decisions on whether aircraft are saved or scrapped.
Even those aircraft deemed too old to fly can hide a large amount of value in their interiors.
“The decision to dismantle an aircraft most often depends on whether the value of its parts and components is higher than that of the aircraft as a flying machine,” says Mark Gregory, managing director of Air Salvage International, an aviation services firm based at the UK’s Cotswolds Airport.
But many aircraft do not even reach old age.
“The average age of the aircraft we scrap is 18 years,” Gregory tells CNN Travel. “This is already well below the theoretical operational life they have been designed for, but in some occasions we have dismantled aircraft that were not even 10 years old,” adds Gregory, whose firm has dismantled some 730 commercial aircraft of all types over the last couple of decades.
Courtesy Air Salvage
Air Salvage Managing Director Mark Gregory says the average age of aircraft scrapped is 18 years.
The potential of aircraft parts as an asset class has drawn the attention of specialized investment firms as well as some hedge funds.
“It is a very sizable industry,” explains David Treitel, a former executive at Apollo Aviation Group, a Miami-based financial services firm that is active in this market.
“Most of the value is in the engines, but there is an active market for all sorts of used parts and spares. It is often more interesting for an airline to replace a broken part with a used one, rather than repair it.”
Courtesy Air Salvage
There's a market for used aircraft parts.
As the supply for certain components is rather rigid, a surge in demand can prompt a global scramble and drive accordingly the relative value of aircraft and their constituent parts.
Despite the safeguards in place and regulatory oversight – all parts should be properly tracked and accounted for – the global nature of this market and its myriad intermediaries means some counterfeits end up eventually in the supply chain.
An issue that perhaps the nascent blockchain technology industry can help tackle.
“It is estimated that at least 2% of parts are counterfeit. Given the large number of parts in every aircraft, you get an idea of the size of this issue,” says Eleanor Mitch, founder of SafeFlights, a Paris-based start-up that is developing smart contract technologies to certify aerospace parts.
Courtesy Vincent Castello
This suite at the Hotel Costa Verde on the Costa Rican coast was once a Boeing 727. For $250 a night ($500 during peak season) you can sleep next to tropical beaches in an airplane that can no longer fly.
courtesy vincent costello
The emergency door on the 727 leads to a relaxing lunch area on the patio, built above the right wing of the airplane. Unexpected guests may include sloths and monkeys.
courtesy starkweather design
Made from the fuselage of a Boeing 307 Stratoliner, this shipshape little vessel once belonged to Howard Hughes. As it passed between owners, it evolved into its current seafaring form. Singer-songwriter Jimmy Buffett christened it the "Cosmic Muffin." Current owner, Dave Drimmer, purchased it as a houseboat 1981. It now sits in Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
courtesy starkweather design
Owner Dave Drimmer, rebuilding the hull of his "planeboat" in 1994.
courtesy motoart
California-based MotoArt designs and builds unconventional furniture from decommissioned aircraft. Clients include AOL, Microsoft, GoDaddy, NetJets, Alitalia, Boeing, Northrup Grumman and Royal Jordanian.
courtesy motoart
A section of airplane fuselage, pretty much useless on its own. Add a desk and it becomes a stylish aluminum alloy partition that also happens to be extremely tough and durable.
courtesy motoart
This MotoArt's seat design is called the "Albatross," and made from parts rescued from airplane bone yards.
courtesy motoart
"About 120 man hours go into each piece with MotoArt's technician grinding, cutting, sanding and polishing," says MotoArt's website about creating corporate desks from airplane parts. "The wing is buffed for 12 hours to bring about the stunning finish of your piece of art." The website has detailed information about the aircraft each piece is made from.
courtesy motoart
MotoArt creates all sorts of tables -- martini tables, coffee tables, conference tables -- from unexpected plane parts, including propellers.
courtesy motoar
Magic Mike would love this MotoArt coffee table. It comes with a fancy name -- the F-4 Phantom -- and includes 10 burner cans with red LED internal illumination for mood lighting.
As this simple but brilliant bordbar design proves, getting furniture from airplanes doesn't have to mean cutting through an aluminum fuselage or hacking off the engine. Sometimes it's a matter of taking what's already there and giving it a slight facelift.
courtesy skypak
That annoying elbow-jostling drinks cart has a classy new look, thanks to Skypak.
courtesy motoart
Skypak, a German company that specializes in selling refurbished trolleys, has a clever storage idea: use trolleys to store ties and shirts. You can purchase customizations such as shelves and drawers with the trolleys at the Skypak store. More innovative conversions include DVD racks, coffee bars and shoe cabinets. Skypak trolleys start at €1,380 ($1,833).
courtesy bordbar
Once it held ginger ale and packets of peanuts. Now it holds important documents; bordbar trolleys start at €979 ($1,300).
courtesy hotelsuites.nl
The Hotel Suite in the Netherlands consists of a completely intact 1960 Ilyushin Il-18 converted into a hotel suite for two.
courtesy hotelsuites.nl
The Hotel Suite is equipped with this bed, a Jacuzzi, infrared sauna and mini-bar. It's a plane of many lives: it started out as a political transport, was converted to a commercial airplane seating 120, then used as a restaurant for 15 years until it became a hotel in 2007.
courtesy jumbo stay
He throws his suitcase in a gesture of celebration -- he's going to be bunking in a jet tonight. That jet is Jumbo Stay at Stockholm's Arlanda Airport, the only jumbo jet hotel in the world. It also happens to be an affordable hostel, fitted with 76 beds.
courtesy jumbo sta
With commercial seats removed, airplanes look surprisingly larger inside. This is the dining area at Jumbo Stay.
courtesy coverings etc
Bio-Luminum is an aluminum tiling product made by U.S.-based Coverings ETC. It's made from 100% recycled aircraft aluminum. Unidentifiable aircraft parts -- cockpit? wingtip? -- get new lives as parts of a decorative wall.
courtesy coverings etc.
The game: spot the airplane. It's there, in its new form as Bio-Luminum, and it's clean, understated and -- we'll say it -- stylish.
courtesy kiehl's
The Kiehl's storefront at the Yorkdale Shopping Center in Toronto is adorned with Bio-Luminum bricks. "The objective was to stand out among the many other larger storefronts," says Tom Berroth, Global Store Designer at Kiehl's. "One of Kiehl's founding fathers -- Aaron Morse -- was a military pilot and collected stunt planes. So a significant aspect of Kiehl's heritage and brand references Mr. Morse's passion for flying and adventure."
courtesy carson leh and laura doss
Architect David Hertz designed this Wing House in Malibu from the wing of a Boeing 747 for a client who requested "curvilinear, feminine shapes." While the roof looks durable, we're wondering what it sounds like when it rains.
courtesy carson leh and laura doss
Given the strength and durability of aircraft aluminum, building a home from a former aircraft is practical.
courtesy joe axline
Joe Axline's airplane home, "Project Freedom," involves two airplanes. Axline works in IT, but with a father who used to fly for Pan Am, he's always had an interest in airplanes. "When I was 15 my dad would drive me to the airport so I could get in an airplane and go fly around the country," says Axline, who moved into the airplane in November 2012.
courtesy joe axline
"The baggage compartments are really huge and will be turned into the kids' game room," says Axline.
courtesy john kaay of cold water photography
Once a Boeing 737, this artificial reef off the coast of British Columbia is so covered in algae that it's hard to believe that it was once airborne. "It sits in about 90 feet of water suspended on an underwater 'cradle,' to simulate 'flying' underwater," says Deidre Forbes McCracken of the Artificial Reef Society of British Columbia. "The reef attracts divers from all around the world."
If properly taken care of, airliners can have a long operative life spanning several decades.
Some airlines may even prefer older aircraft types for operational reasons.
Take, for example, Alliance Airlines, a niche carrier that services mining outposts throughout Australia. This Brisbane-based airline has been snapping up second-hand Fokker 100 aircraft as soon as European airlines take them out of service. The ruggedness and reliability of the old Fokkers make them ideal to operate in the hot, dusty airports Alliance flies to.
However, most aging aircraft do not get a chance to enjoy a second youth in Australia. For them the beginning of the end is a flight to a storage airport.
There are a handful of such facilities around the world. Quite a few of them are located in the southwestern United States, to take advantage of the dry climate and land availability. In Europe, similar facilities exist in the Cotswolds (UK), Tarbes and Francazal (France) and Teruel (Spain).
Courtesy Airbus SAS
Tarmac engineers may have removed the engines from this aircraft, but that doesn't mean it has to die.
Very often storage is just temporary while an aircraft is changing hands and until it’s transferred to its new owners, but for some aircraft it is the step prior to de-registration and scrapping.
When the decision is taken that an aircraft won’t be flying again, it is, first of all, stripped bare of any valuable components.
“The amount of components that can be reused depends on the age of the aircraft. We may remove some 1,200 parts and components from a fairly newish A320-type aircraft. The engines make 80% to 90% of the value and it is always the first thing to go,” says Gregory.
Once devoid of any valuables, sections of the airframe may be cut and taken away to be used as training facilities for crew, firefighters or at educational institutions.
Miquel Ros
Teruel Airport in eastern Spain is Europe's largest industrial airport. It might look like a plane junkyard, but most of the airplanes are waiting for the chance to fly again.
Miquel Ros
It hosts aircraft from all over the world that have been withdrawn from service, be it temporarily or permanently, and caters to their maintenance needs.
Miquel Ros
Some are ready to fly but need to wait for financial or legal issues to be sorted out first. Some are here because the airlines that own them need to temporarily adjust capacity to cope with fluctuating market conditions.
Miquel Ros
Teruel's arid climate is ideal for storing the aircraft with minimum deterioration.
Miquel Ros
Teruel is one of only a few such facilities on the planet. There's one near Pau in France and another in the Mojave Desert in the United States.
Miquel Ros
Teruel is also home to a whole range of other aviation-related activities, including drone and rocket-engine testing and pilot training.
Miquel Ros
The troubles undergone by Russian airlines Transaero and UTAir have led to a recent influx of Russian airliners of all types, some of them almost new from the factory.
Miquel Ros
An planned expansion of the airport grounds that will allow for more than 200 airliners to be stored simultaneously.
Miquel Ros
While the airport isn't typically open to visitors, plane spotters can easily check it out from the nearby highway.
Everything else would be recycled or sold for scrap.
In fact, once the aircraft has been de-registered, it is technically classed as waste and it has to be processed in compliance with environmental regulations.
No surprise, then, that one of the most prominent players in this field, the French firm Tarmac Aerosave, which manages facilities at Tarbes, Francazal and Teruel, is in fact co-owned by aerospace firms Airbus and Safran together with waste management giant Suez.
CNN/Ayesha Durgahee
Planes are recycled at Tarmac Aerosave.
Breaking down an aircraft requires specialized skills and some really smart technology to gather, separate and recycle the different metals, plastics and fluids that it contains.
On occasions the aircraft is not recycled, but simply left to rust. “There may be legal or financial reasons for an aircraft owner not to de-register an aircraft, even when it is clear that it won’t be flying again. This is when you see those impressive aircraft graveyards,” explains Treitel.
Courtesy Jumbo Stay Hotel
Jumbo Stay Hotel at Stockholm's Arlanda Airport reuses an old Boeing 747.
In a small number of cases, aircraft are assigned to more unusual roles after retirement.
This was the case for one of Virgin Atlantic’s Boeing 747s. After coming out of service, this jumbo jet was transferred to sister company Virgin Galactic, so that it could serve as a launch pad for its new space travel vehicles.
Private individuals and entrepreneurs have also bought old airliners to convert them into hotels, restaurants or tourist attractions.
Courtesy Jumbo Stay Hotel
You can stay inside an old jet in the Jumbo Stay Hotel.
A Boeing 767 that used to fly for the now bankrupt Russian airline Transaero made headlines when it was transferred by barge to its new home at a theme park in the west of Ireland, providing some extraordinary photo opportunities along the way.
Travelers staying overnight at Arlanda Airport in Stockholm can sleep at the Jumbo Stay Hotel, that, as its name implies, it is set in an old Boeing 747 that has been given a new role in the hospitality industry.
Next to Zurich airport, an old Soviet-made Ilyushin Il-14 takes center stage at aviation-themed restaurant Runway34.
Nostalgia for past eras means that in rare cases attempts are made to bring old aircraft to life.
Courtesy Runway34
Runway34 is a restaurant near Zurich airport with an old Soviet-made Ilyushin Il-14 as its centerpiece.
This is the case for Lufthansa’s project to restore to flying condition a 1950s Lockheed Super Constellation, where the airframe has been preserved but the cockpit and cabin are being completely rebuilt and equipped with modern avionics at a significant cost.
In any case, what seems clear is that with the impressive growth of the global commercial aircraft fleet in recent years, the business of storing, recycling or finding new placements for aging aircraft seems assured.