Airlines crisis! Working planes sent to GIANT desert graveyard

The good news is loads of really cheap flights as the airlines are in a massive price war.

The airline industry has always been a tough place to make money. Famed investor Warren Buffett has been quoted as saying that the industry as a whole hasn't made a profit in its 120-year history.

The Arizona Airline Park is going to have to put up a " Car Park FULL" sign soon.

In order to save money many of the worlds airlines are grounding more craft than at any time since the 9/ 11 attacks and Ansett collapse (a major airline that with Sars and 911 parked over 20 craft there)

www.thepepper.com...

The aircraft graveyard is a superb place to see, Some 4000 aircraft. The desert conditions provide pristine preservation condtions.
The planes include old DC-9s and 737s, as well as newer 747s and 757s. Some will be sold for parts and scrap metal or are fgrounded till econimcally viable to put on routes again.

Qantas has just sent its fleet of 747-300s there ( a fleet just about 15 years old) Hopefully they will fly again when times improve. Though I'm not a fan of that flying elephant.

Airlines can very easily go down at these scary times. Qantas has just announced a couple of thousand job cuts due to the down turn.


b52 bobmers at AMARC
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/e4afed4cabd6.jpg[/atsimg]

fighter jets
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/a04ea7fffef7.jpg[/atsimg]

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/76e20c040373.jpg[/atsimg]

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/8b48cf323669.jpg[/atsimg]






[edit on 15-4-2009 by zazzafrazz]

reply to post by zazzafrazz


Thanks. I am going to sleep much better knowing that we have all those extra B52's and fighter jets laying around. Makes you feel kind of safe.

On the plus side pollution levels will get to their lowest levels since 9/11 with the ordered grounding of all aircraft.
When the planes stayed down, the air quality shot straight up nationwide.

Yes this is true, I don't place much faith in the airlines fancifull "carbon emission trading" schemes that they get you to pay for.

The number 1 cause of pollution though I Thought was textile manufacturing, then animal nitrogen emissions? I could be wrong.

The trade off...the environment or say the 60000 people Qantas employees, or even more with Delta, US AIR, Untied etc.hhhhmmmm what to choose.

Gotta keep a flyin...









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[edit on 15-4-2009 by zazzafrazz]

reply to post by zazzafrazz

Originally posted by justsomeboreddude
reply to post by zazzafrazz

 

Thanks. I am going to sleep much better knowing that we have all those extra B52's and fighter jets laying around. Makes you feel kind of safe.

The mice will get to them and they'll be useless. That is how big planes go down.

I am trying to remmeber the documentary that I watched about "mice on a plane" but I cannot recall. But they do (mice) eat the plane from the inside out.

www.eturbonews.com...

Not a problem in the desert facility.
If They encase them in some weird thing, can't rememebr what it is, Like a super strong see through plastic film cocoon.
Keeps them snug as a bug in a rug

[edit on 14-4-2009 by zazzafrazz]

Couple of things here. AMARC has nothing to do with civilian planes. It's a military facility. The major storage points for civilian planes go to a totally different storage place. AMARC is the Aerospace Maintenance And Regeneration Center, and there are approximately 4200 aircraft there.

The primary civilian storage locations are the Evergreen Air Center (Pinal Airpark which is a former CIA airfield and is still pretty secret), Mojave Airport, Southern California Logistics Airport, Kingman Airport, Tuscon International (although it's shrinking due to airport demand), Phoenix-Goodyear Airport, George AFB (they have mostly MD-11s waiting to convert to freighters), Roswell, Anchorage, and Maxton Airport.

The other thing to consider is that air travel is down something like 10%, but it's down 10% from being higher than it was before 9/11. So it's not really down quite as badly as it sounds.



[edit on 4/14/2009 by Zaphod58]

I remember driving by this place going from Pheonix to Tucson to New Mexico. Its amazing, all those planes. I wonder how quickly the B-52s and jets could be un-mothballed to operational status again, in the even they are ever needed. Hopefully they never will be, cause if they are then the you-know-what has hit the big fan!

I imagine that if the airlines are going to the expense of mothballing some of their fleet then they don't see airline travel picking up anytime soon

reply to post by JJRichey


Probably 90% of the aircraft in the boneyard will never fly again. They're parts donors for the ones that are still flying, and some of the F-4s are coming out to become QF-4 drones for them to shoot down in live fire exercises.

The majority of planes were put there because they were too old, or they had too much corrosion, or had some major problem that would be too expensive to fix. They have to preserve them, so that the parts they may take off them later will be usable still.

Thanks for the correction
The civilian facility also has military craft i thought, really old ones?

The down turn is more than 10% depending which carrier, I work in this industry and its SLUMPED......

reply to post by zazzafrazz


Some locations have WWII aircraft. For many years they converted WWII aircraft to firefighting aircraft, but they're not allowed to do that anymore, due to some bad crashes.

Yeah, it's more than 10%, but the industry had room for it to slump a lot before it REALLY hurt them badly. Air travel increased a LOT post 9/11 (once it started up again), and hit record numbers.

January-June 2007 there were 311, 548, 861 passengers flying domestically in the US according to DOT statistics.

airconsumer.dot.gov...

Ironically, this downturn may turn out to be a GOOD thing for the airlines.

Post 9/11 there was about a 5.7% drop in traffic, which required the airlines to park many planes. They parked mostly 727-200s, 737-200s, and DC-9s, which were the most fuel inefficient aircraft in their fleet.

At the end of February, there was a 49% increase over the number of aircraft parked in 2008. Again, the aircraft most in danger of being parked at MD-80s and 737 Classics. The airlines are being forced into a more fuel efficient fleet, that is cheaper to operate, and better for the environment by the downturn.

The Evergreen facility at Marana estimated there are currently 185 aircraft parked there, 160 were parked in 2008. They've had some 747-300/400s and 767s but the main additions are MD-80s and 737s. Of that fleet, they estimate that 40% could fly again. They're estimating that 400 will be parked in the near term, but within a year we'll see some aircraft going back out into service.

40% increase that much?
Yes its a cost saving excercise, they quite simply can't afford to keep flying planes on non profitable routes, ie. 1/4 empty passenger loadings, so hopefully its enough to get them back in the air again in the next 12 months. Along with the thousands of job cuts that is.

As an aside, when airlines buy fuel they buy 3-5 years in advance. So what they paid during the fuel hike last year we won't see till down the track. They introduced fuel levies, but that was rubbish, just an extra cash grab when people could afford it. Global meltdown hit-bang-fuel surcharges gone.

I saw a show on the drones, and the 'target practice'.
Have you got more info on that? Its was amazing stuff, from memory they rebuild them get them airworthy to shoot them outa the sky in training? Is that right?







[edit on 15-4-2009 by zazzafrazz]

reply to post by zazzafrazz


Basically. They take the F-4s and get them into flyable condition again, and fly them manned over Arizona. They take them into the supersonic corridor, and go just over Mach 1 to verify they can still go supersonic, bring them back and inspect them. They can then designate them QF-4, and can fly them either manned or unmanned. You can see a large number of them taken out of AMARC for conversion. I was looking through the inventory last night from 2006, and a couple of months they were taking 10 or more out of inventory and returning them to become QFs.

Once they're ready for something like WSEP (Weapon System Evaluation Program) they'll take them out to the exercise area, and do a dry run with the QF-4s, and a pilot on board. After they have everything mapped out, they go back out to the firing range with it unmanned, and they take the shot. They either use the QF-4, or there is also the BQM-167A Skeeter. There is talk of also adding the F-16 to the unmanned family, using the ones from AMARC.

reply to post by Zaphod58


And so are the unmanned craft taken out by surface to air or by craft?
You're image shows a missile, I thought it was also part of fighter pilot training for some reason?

Imagine the E and M guys who build these craft from dust heaps get them flying with a pilot, then bang they're gone, I image the cost involved is substantial.

Also further up in your 1st post you mentioned that Roswell has a graveyard. I didn't know that. Protoype's, or disused military craft like a stealth that they dont want anyone getting their hands on?


[edit on 15-4-2009 by zazzafrazz]

reply to post by zazzafrazz


Either. It depends on the exercise. Sometimes it involves ships, sometimes planes. I don't remember the numbers off the top of my head, but the Navy has a bunch of QF-4s, and the Air Force has a bunch of them.

The BQM-167A is a high performance target drone, developed by Composite Engineering. It's capable of .91 Mach, and high G turns. It looks like a missile, but it's a UAV actually.

Roswell is a civilian boneyard. It's officially the Roswell Industrial Air Center Airport. It's home to MANY industries, besides aviation. It started as the Roswell Army Airfield, later Walker Air Force Base. After Walker closed in 1967, it became a civilian airport. It covers just over 5000 acres, with three runways. One is 13,000 feet long, one is just over 7400 feet long, and one is just under 10,000 feet long.

They also have a bus making facility, fireworks plant, plastics manufacturing, candy manufacturing, Eastern New Mexico University, several aircraft restoration companies, New Mexico Rehabilitation Center, and the New Mexico Air National Guard there.

reply to post by Zaphod58


I was so hoping for some juicy secret stuff on Roswell!
So what about the Pinal Airpark which is the former CIA airfield , That's gotta have secret craft, and prototypes? Any idea what kind of craft, or which graveyard the secrets go to?


[edit on 15-4-2009 by zazzafrazz]

reply to post by zazzafrazz


Most likely Pinal only has former CIA planes on it. Ones that they haven't admitted were theirs. Maybe some buildings that still has their equipment on it. I doubt you'll see anything really secret on it, because they let Evergreen put other airlines planes there.