Old Aeroplane for Sale

Recycled old aircraft: How can I buy old airplane seat and other parts?

Want a buisness classy airplane saddle made of cowhide, yours for 450 US$ ($NZ657)? What about a fully functional General Electric CF6 powerplant once used to propel a McDonnell Douglas DC-10 plane. Airplane cemeteries: There is even a commercial organization, the Aircraft Fleet Recycling Association, dedicated to promoting best practices in the recycling of airplane parts and material.

Aeroplane seats' fire resistant characteristics collapse after some time, making them insecure and unlawful for further use in aeroplanes. Replaced Finnair planes have landed as passengers' seat in Finnish Red Cross cars. Whilst some carriers are selling their old planes to a recycling company or just returning them to the lessor who own them, some are taking a more practical and imaginative one.

Luv Seat, an air company that cooperated with NGOs in Africa, took off after a few scratches on its face. KLM re-designed its flight attendant uniform, and the company had the excess cloth interwoven into rugs that were lining the 747-400 flight attendant's new 747-400 family. After all, once everything has been removed from an airplane, the corpse is crushed, sent to a scrap yard, and in most cases smelted and recycled back into the delivery system in a whole new state.

When they retire, what happens to them?

Series after series of dilapidated airplanes that rust away very slow in the dessert. Airplane cemeteries may be quite dramatic, but they are just a small gear in the intriguing industries that take car of airliners when they are taken out of use. Once a passenger plane is nearing the end of its useful lives, an entire finance and manufacturing eco-system is deployed, ranging from hedge fund to specialised recycler.

Planes are rescued or scraped by Salvage International. Airplanes that are classified as too old to be flown can conceal a large part of their value inside. "In most cases, the choice to disassemble an airplane will depend on whether the value of its parts and assemblies is greater than the value of the airplane as a flight machine," says Mark Gregory, CEO of the British airline company Cotswolds Airport, which operates under the name air Salvage International.

Many planes don't even get old. "In some cases we have disassembled planes that were not even 10 years old," Gregory added, whose company has disassembled around 730 airliners of all kinds in recent years.

Mark Gregory, CEO of the Air Salvage, says the mean retirement date of scrap planes is 18 years. However, the potentially attractive nature of airframe parts as an assets category has attracted the interest of specialist securities companies and some Hedge Fund companies. "The largest part of the value lies in the motors, but there is an open commercial vehicle for all types of used parts and spare parts.

" There is a second-hand airplane parts aftermarket. Given that the availability of certain component supplies is rather inflexible, a spurt in aggregate consumption can lead to uncertainty globally and affect the value of aeroplanes and their component parts accordingly. With so many parts in each plane, you get an inkling of how big the problem is," says Eleanor Mitch, founding partner of SafeFlights, a Paris-based start-up that develops intelligent contracting technology to validate parts in the aviation and space industries.

With appropriate maintenance, airplanes can have a long useful lifetime of several years. Certain carriers even favour older aircrafts for operating purposes. Brisbane carrier grabs used Fokker 100s as soon as Europe carriers take them out of use. Most ageing airplanes, however, have no opportunity to experience a second childhood in Australia.

Maybe our engineer from Pharmac took the engine out of that plane, but that doesn't mean it has to kill. Often the warehousing is only transient while an airplane changes ownership and until it is handed over to its new owner, but for some airplanes it is the stage before exmatriculation and scrap.

If it is decided that an airplane will no longer fly, it is first freed from precious parts. "Number of reusable parts varies depending on the airplane ages. Approximately 1,200 parts and assemblies can be removed from a fairly new A320 plane.

Motors account for 80% to 90% of the value and it's always the first thing you have to do," says Gregory. After deregistration, the aeroplane is classified as technical refuse and must be treated in accordance with environment legislation. Dismantling an airplane demands special capabilities and some truly intelligent technologies to collect, sort and recover the various metal, plastic and liquid materials it contains.

Occasionally the airplane is not reclaimed, but just rusted. "It may be for whatever reason, whether legally or financially, that an operator does not deregister an aeroplane, even if it is clear that it will not fly again. Here you can see the impressing airplane graves", Treitel states.

A few cases are where aeroplanes are given more abnormal role after retiring. The nostalgia of the past means that in a few cases, an attempt is made to revive old airplanes. At any rate, it seems clear that with the remarkable expansion of the worldwide passenger air liner fleets in recent years, the storage, refurbishment or re-routing of ageing aircrafts seems to be secured.