First 747-400 heads for wrecker

www.stuff.co.nz...

Air New Zealand's first Boeing 747-400 will soon make one final flight to a wrecker's yard as further capacity cuts loom in the face of a continued fall in demand for global air travel.

The 19-year-old jumbo, named The Bay of Islands, was grounded and put up for sale after completing Air New Zealand's historic biofuel test flight in December

it seems all the major airlines are offloading the boeing 4 engined aircraft now . i know BA are looking at ditching them far quicker than they first thought, and its a sign of the times , when the replacement - the 747-8i can only manage 20 orders.

twins are cheaper to operate and until the AF447 flight had an amazing over water flight record.

Very true, I suppose airlines either want to save money and buy twins or else on busier routes pack an A380 to capacity, thus having cheaper per passanger costs. The 747 fits neither sceanario and is starting to look more like a mammoth than a jumbo...

Jensy

I just hate to see any bird destroyed. I have a place they can park a few if they want to.

no one wants to buy them - theres a parking lot full of 747`s in the desert allready

The other factor is many of the -400 have a huge amount of cycles on them, and are not even candidates for conversion to freighters.

With the comming of the 787 and the A350 we may start seeing 777-200's head that was as well.

reply to post by FredT


only after the A340`s start being parked first

Make that ALL airbusses....

BRING BACK CONCORDE

Originally posted by BSG75
BRING BACK CONCORDE

Nice sentiment, but if the airlines are ditching 19 year old 747's how in God's green Earth are they going to make Concord work?

reply to post by Now_Then


Simple... fit it with engines that will take Bio-Fuel.

It is the best Aircraft that ever took to the skies along with the F14, Spitfire/Seafire, Hurricane and DC3.

I do like the 747, and do think that it a Beautiful aircraft... perhaps we can all club together and start "ATS Aircraft services"?

reply to post by Now_Then


theres only 2 left anyway - 1 in toulouse , that *could* be serviceable with ALOT of money , and 1 in the UK that looks pretty but has no engines.

or fluids in her for 10 years

and the tyres are craked up

so no concord will not fly again.

reply to post by Harlequin


I think you will find that they are more then one still around. Several are in the UK, one/two in america and one in barbados.

reply to post by BSG75


I have to agree with Harlequin here. The Concord will not fly again. Its not just a matter of fueling the sucker up and putting it back into revenue flights. The airframe would basically have to have a total teardown and rebuild. Many if not all of the spare parts are gone so they would have to be retolled from scratch. You would have to retrain a cadre of pilots and flight crews to fly the aircraft again.

Biofuel at this stage does not offer much in the way of savings either and they would be better off using standard fuel rather than qualify the Olympis (sp) engines on biofuel.

The point is could you do it? Sure but it would never be cost effective.

[edit on 6/17/09 by FredT]

The point FredT, is that of course it would not be cost effective, but thats the whole point of it! We Brits like things that cost too much!