Airport Stuffed with Airliners | Hacker News Reader

Airport Stuffed with Airliners

thedrive.com

167 pointsvinnyglennon87 comments

YouTube video of 500 foot above ground level (AGL) approach of the runway shutdown to accommodate storage: https://youtu.be/zIbXai0l174

Airport details: https://www.airnav.com/airport/KVCV

Runway 3-21 is the temporarily closed runway being used for storage

Whoa, this is weird: https://youtu.be/zIbXai0l174?t=344

What is with that plane in the middle? You can make out the Qantas kangaroo on the tail (normally white on red), but it's been painted out in red?

Mothballed or to-be-scrapped planes often get their paint jobs covered up, as no one wants to see a Qantas plane looking like it's falling apart.

Yeah this seems likely. I think Qantas were retiring most of their 747's.

Everyone is. They're being scrapped or converted to cargo (passenger 747 hasn't been made in a long while now, only cargo).

Except for the replacement Air Force One aircraft which are to be a modified 747-8s.

https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/27179/exclusive-photos...

> Also, some have posited that buying aircraft that were already built to standard airline specifications may end up actually costing more to convert them into VC-25Bs compared to just ordering new aircraft as some modifications and provisions for certain unique systems, electromagnetic hardening, and wiring could not have been made on the production line and now they need to be retrofitted. Considering that a brand new 747-8i costs roughly $400M, the aircraft themselves were never a massive part of the overall program's cost.

It is amazing to me that the planes are under a fifth of the cost of the project: over $5 billion. This project is more expensive than the stupidly (expensive, 2x over budget) WTC Path Station!

Lufthansa is still flying their 747s and bought a bunch of -8s for passenger use.

https://simpleflying.com/lufthansa-boeing-747-retirement/

Part of the true story is that most of the other carriers didn't want to perform the fuel inerting retrofit that the FAA mandated to be completely done by the end of 2017. This was the end result of the TWA800 explosion back in 1996 which was believed to have been caused by ignition in the fuel tanks.

https://www.faa.gov/documentLibrary/media/Advisory_Circular/...

That's (not-coincidentally) the date United and Delta retired their 747s with a big publicity splash which let them avoid the real question of why they were flying their craft without fuel interting systems right up until the day before it was mandated.

Qantas had originally scheduled to retire their last 747's over the coming year, but the pandemic shutdown pretty much made them re-schedule their plans for immediate retirement.

Qantas now no longer operate the 747. Which is a strange feeling when you consider that at one point in the 80's, they were exclusively an ALL 747 fleet operator!

I will certainly miss the 747. Alitalia, BA, Cathay, KLM, Korean, Lufthansa, Quantas, Thai, Virgin, just a handful of operators I've flown on it with. Best ride was KLM (front row seat under the cabin), best food was Lufthansa (seemingly unlimited dinners, and a cheese board - in economy), best random time Thai (serve yourself bar and becoming best friends with a DJ sitting in the next seat), best sleep Alitalia (that was an old one even for the time; the least mod cons = the best sleep).

More modern airliners seem somewhat beige. More fuel efficient, that's certainly positive, but bland.

So what fraction of operational airplanes are in flight at any given (pre-Covid-19) time? Are they normally "stored" in the air?

Keeping a plane in the air requires extremely expensive amounts of fuel. These planes would otherwise be active on routes, at airport gates, on the ramp temporarily, in maintenance, or stored at a base owned or partnered with by the airline (in the worst case). A big part of running an airline is making sure you are using your fleet to make money since planes are expensive to own, maintain, insure, and fly. These airlines may be switching over to freight for supply runs but don't have their own storage capacity for the planes that would normally be flying now-closed passenger routes and can't be repurposed for freight.

To a large extent they normally are "stored" in the air. A typical narrowbody aircraft in the US clocks 9-10 block hours a day (a little less in the air) and widebodies even more. So somewhere around 40% of all commercial passenger aircraft are in the air at any given time (higher during the day and lower at night, of course).

I got curious about the airplane wheelie record. Seems it was set the day before this video was posted: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SLRZDDORFcY

So, one runway filled with dozens of airliners, the other one has someone doing three-mile wheelies in a Cessna :)

Funny seeing this from on here from the FB group where the pilot posted. :)

If you want to see such a fleet of grounded planes in person, it's worth going to Tucson to visit Pima and take a tour of the Boneyard at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base. Pima is a normal museum admittance but the on-base bus tour requires preregistration and a background check.

For now since we can't travel, I definitely recommend taking a look in google maps satellite view:

https://goo.gl/maps/5jo5jkpXPc9AtrW68

In the SE corner of the base you can see long range nuclear bombers with their tails and wings clipped, for all the world to see.

That's amazing, thank you. Putting the location code 549R+27 into Google Earth also gives an interesting view.

That's wild. Looks like just a bunch of plane icons on a map at first glance.

On a related note: Alice Springs Airport, in the centre of Australia, is being used by Singapore Airlines to store unused aircraft due to it's dry environment.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-04-28/during-coronavirus-pa...

Boeing Field looked like that even before COVID-19, with all the 737 MAX in storage.

Lots of photos online -- search "boeing field 737 max storage". I like the ones that show the reclamation of employee parking spaces: https://www.pressclub.world/2019/07/22/boeing-737-max-ground...

Yuuuup, I was driving past there on either Marginal or airport way every other weekend or so, it was starting to look like the DMAFB boneyard. Except more uniform.

I have a mental picture of someone hitting the wrong pedal, hitting a 737 in the employee parking lot, and having to call insurance.

"I had an accident. The other vehicle is... kinda expensive."

Very fun when driving down I5 South to always see which new MAX arrived from around the world.

This has happened before. In the immediate aftermath of 9/11 north american airspace was closed. All those international flights from europe were not allowed into US airspace. So they started piling up on canadian tarmac. Small towns like Gander Newfoundland saw their populations double in a matter of hours as transatlantic flights landed on their tiny airport. We don't have drone footage, but I've heard stories about aircraft being parked on grass ... something everyone is loathed to do.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_Ey5ph4wW8

> Small towns like Gander Newfoundland saw their populations double in a matter of hours as transatlantic flights landed on their tiny airport.

This is dramatized in a delightful musical, Come From Away.

So logistically, how does this work. The pilots fly the planes there, and have to catch a bus home? Of they have a small plane to take them back? They have special pilots that they fly out just to take them here?

And when they go back to work, the pilots all travel out to pick up their plane and start their routes?

Where these planes are stored, I imagine they must have constant maintenance on them. Or do they need to fly them back and get checked over by the airline?

This is such a huge undertaking that is mostly hidden from us.

A friend of mine was a ferry pilot for the airlines. But essentially, a crew flies the plane out to its storage destination, and there is usually transport arranged out for them - either a bus, or a smaller corporate jet or even a piston engine a/c would be flown out with them to carry them back home or to their next deployment location.

As for them returning to service, yes, you guessed right - they have to be checked while still on the ground by a maintenance team, then if they have been there for a while, they have to be flown to a maintenance base for fairly extensive servicing before they can be declared airworthy enough to carry passengers again.

With luck, this airport probably has a service hangar capable of handling these aircraft types and make them airworthy again, so I expect that the airline might find it more economical to ship an entire maintenance team with spare parts to be based out of here for a month or so while they get their planes back in the air.

Since the procedures require such extensive checks after those dormant planes' return to service, wouldn't you say that once all of them become airborne again, statistically speaking the risk of catastrophic failures is going to increase? I am afraid well see some accidents end of this year...

That's not likely. The checks to get the grounded aircraft back in air are quite extensive. And similar checks are regularly conducted under normal conditions anyway.

It might even be the case that we see less accidents, as more aircraft are getting extensive checks than before. As long as maintenance is done correctly that is. Which was true before already as well

I once met a bunch of guys at Graceland that had just flown in a jet for delivery for Fedex. They fly in the plane and then fly commercial back home.

This is a terrifyingly large amount of capital sitting in one place. The part of me that wants to mitigate risk is thinking, maybe these planes should be spreadout around the country a bit. I guess there are no tornados in this area...but one freak weather event and a couple trillion dollars gets mangled into scrap?

What kind of weather event are you thinking of? I think airplanes are typically designed to withstand high winds. The weather in this region is dry, and that's really the only word that can describe it. On top of that, we're at the beginning of the dry season. It's more likely a landing plane accidentally crashes into these parked planes than the weather leaves us with a trillion dollars of mangled scrap.

What about arson?

the planes are rather far apart from each other and alumininum isn't the most flammable thing. Also there is about 300-1km cordon around the whole thing with warning signs saying "this is national security area", and it's so sparse that it's probably rather effectively surveiled by about 3-4 people unless, say, 1000 people try to do arson at the same time.

Apparently theft of radar equipment is more of a thing than arson.

Not just aluminium, the whole plane is designed to make it hard to catch fire.

Isn't this a region that's incredibly prone to wildfires?

Airports aren’t generally very wooded areas... and the SCLA is in basically scrub land with barely enough vegetation for a good brush fire.

Maybe a comet impact? Use your apocalyptic imagination to find the scenario most likely to you?

I had the same thought. That's amazing to have billions of dollars of aircraft just sitting in one place.

Not worth a couple trillion dollar. One plane is 250 million, and I reckon there were 150 of them. So, 35-40 billions.

Fair enough. I'm must admit that I haven't been into an airliner dealership lately so I've lost track of the current prices.

I thought I heard the airfield controller say there were 400+ and that they expected 50+ from Southwest soon.

My first thought was about the concentrated value and something like an earthquake or a plane crash. My second thought was "how long would it take to replace one of these planes?" but I guess an airline could replace it within hours due to the Boeing delivery backlog, but likely won't need to because of the lack of demand for travel right now.

Not a trillion, but still expensive.

Not really.

Even 100 737s in one place wouldn't crack $20 gigabucks. And the 787-8, one of the most expensive planes, only costs about two 737s.

There is far more capital in parts of Manhattan or wafer processing warehouses than commercial jets could be valet parked at a civilian international airport.

There's something so aesthetically beautiful about these images. The repetition and contrast. And the rarity of the scene.

It all seems so... vulnerable though. That's a lot of expensive craft in one spot.

VCV (Victorville) is often used for aircraft storage. While they have way more aircraft on their parking lot than usual, it's not abnormal for this airport to have a bunch of aircraft hanging out.

Boeing doing so poorly is heartbreaking. Come on, Shopify is almost as worth as Boeing now by marketcap. Trying to let that sink in.

Also I live 20 mins from the Boeing Mega Factory in Everett and the technological marvel of making flying beasts have been a great source of inspiration.

Now Boeing is a source of “how to fuck up a great company”.

To be fair, Shopify's prospects for the future look like they will scale far better (and also Boeing's uncertainty in the short-medium term is currently priced in).

Reports were that Boeing's expansion into South Carolina were done rapidly without training up the local workers. Quality control in SC was far below par with the Washington factories.

Perhaps Boeing's fall is a reflection on the US economy. We still make lots of things, but we pinch pennies and quality suffers. Then it catches up to us when it's revealed that we avoided regulatory scrutiny by obscuring a fairly large change in design. Now we hit severe headwinds and the future is scary and uncertain because this is the inevitable outcome of the direction we have been steering for 1-2 generations.

The person writing the article went to the effort of obtaining this "exclusive" imagery, but didn't go to any effort to do any analysis: how many planes, which airlines, which models etc.

How hard is it to reactivate these planes?

Generally they can turn around and activate a reserve plane in about 30 minutes. It’s got everything it needs except food, water, and fuel.

Well, there's some nuances.

If they're mothballed (skin covered and various systems pickled), then about a month of work each.

If they're not mothballed and they do weekly or bi-weekly maintenance on each plane like they're supposed to, then an inspection, and then they're ready.

So the worst case is a month, and the best case is an inspection plus 30 minutes.

Also, note that in the mdoern era, a lot of avionics require periodic updates, which also have to be performed before flight.

But if I was the FAA, I'd be requiring crew-only acceptance flights before any revenue flights. You never know where those pesky wasps built a nest, or if those AOC sensors corroded, etc.

Source: commercially-rated airplane pilot.

Do they have to be maintained in any way or can they just leave them there for weeks/months?

They can be left wholly unattended but they will not be considered airworthy when their maintenance/inspection requirements lapse.

Not exactly.

To be left unattended with the intention of flying them again, mothball/pickling is needed. (Tape the outside including sensor ports, plug the engine nacelles, use the right hydraulic or motor fluids, disconnect batteries, etc.)

If you literally just park a 737 somewhere for months, especially a sandy desert, and walk away, then you might have to do millions of dollars of maintenance on the plane to be sure it's airworthy. Like pulling the engines and dealing with corrosion throughout the airplane.

I have a small airplane example. The danger of parking an airplane for an extended period of time, even in a hangar, is that if mice create a nest in the fuselage and urinate there, the aluminum corrosion can cause structural damage. ie. that plane will never fly again.

All those King Airs, Cessna 310s, etc. you see hangared are prone to that. So clean your airplane regularly!

> if mice create a nest in the fuselage and urinate there, the aluminum corrosion can cause structural damage. ie. that plane will never fly again.

Reading that evokes a somber reminder of how quickly our civilization could turn into ruins if left unattended for a few years.

I was just envisioning what this storage airport would look like in 10 years if the airline industry NEVER picks back up to its previous levels. Trillions of dollars worth of airplanes rotting in the sun???

I have a feeling the 800 or so 737 MAX aircraft will all be scrapped (or just the avionics parted out.)

Besides the AOA sensor system problems, there's been FOD in the fuel tanks, wire chafing and very long periods of AOG.

One of those might not be fatal, but all of them? Doesn't look good.

> Trillions of dollars worth of airplanes rotting in the sun???

Should make for an interesting location in a post-apocalyptic or science-and-sorcery story.

A 757 crashed in 1996 when it sat for three weeks and gave mud dauber wasps time to build a nest in the pitot-static tube that fed airspeed information to the autopilot:

https://aviation-safety.net/database/record.php?id=19960206-...

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-02-08-mn-33706-...

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/crash-plane-may-not-have-...

https://www.flightsafety.org/ap/ap_oct99.pdf

> a lot of avionics require periodic updates, which also have to be performed before flight.

Better to happen before flight than during it!

over-the-air-in-the-air update. What could go wrong?

The point is those updates may have expired, and it's required to have updated avionics data before flight, not if OTA updates are available or not.

You're supposed to have "all available data" with you during flight, but for local VFR it's not as big an issue as for IFR or Parts 121/135 operations.

In Canada, they rename the position fixes to catch you. Messed up, but very effective! Expensive too, as I was buying plates for just one flight during the update period.

(I say it's messed up because pro pilots in the US can/are expected to memorize fixes and frequencies, but one of those is not possible in Canada.

I was listening to 2 Aloha Airlines pilots talking once, and the captain gave his copilot shit for not memorizing the frequencies they have to use every day.)

How long does it take to get an inspection from the time it's requested?

Supply/demand curve.

I remember reading that this airport specifically has a contractor that specializes in storing (and presumably maintenance).

As airlines start flying more, they will likely send a percentage of their mechanics to this airfield to speed up the tasks.

> I was the FAA, I'd be requiring crew-only acceptance flights before any revenue flights

They'll have to fly them to another airport to pick up passengers anyway, so I imagine all of their next flights will be flight crew only.

It's probably going to be a lot easier than reactivating the airline industry.

I can't imagine we have anywhere like this in the UK. We don't have a lot of space, and it's too damp. Similarly for other Northern European countries. So where do airliners from those countries get parked up? Somewhere in Spain? Somewhere in the Middle East?

I would assume most of the planes are distributed throughout the main European airports. However, there is an example in Spain of a dedicated parking: https://www.web24.news/u/2020/04/two-models-of-the-failed-ai...

I know most of the KLM fleet in Europe is parked up at Schiphol airport. It was dry here the last few weeks but that stopped yesterday..

https://www.luchtvaartnieuws.nl/nieuws/categorie/2/airlines/...

Much of the BA fleet is parked up at Bournemouth airport - https://youtu.be/qgPw1jWmdE4

Are these airliners safe during a storm? Do they tie them down in some way when on the runway? I mean I guess that's why they're in the desert. But the question still stands in a hypothetical context. Do jetliners survive massive storms on the runway?

Storms wouldn't cause a problem. These planes travel through air at 800km/h, a storm with 100km/h winds is nothing.

Yeah, but they don't travel sideways and they have pilots.

I just cannot for the life of me stop laughing at the image this evoked. Just 400 planes sliding sideways across the desert as pilots are chasing after them on foot.

> Storms wouldn't cause a problem. These planes travel through air at 800km/h, a storm with 100km/h winds is nothing.

These craft are designed for lift. High winds can make planes "take off" while stationary. Not sure it's a problem for planes this size, but it's definitely a problem for smaller planes.

The stall speed for something small like a Cessna 172 is in the ballpark of 60 mph, so those definitely need to be strapped down if there's a chance of even a simple severe thunderstorm. But for something like a Boeing 737, stall speed is more like 125-150 mph (depending on flaps configuration). If surface winds that high are a real possibility, airlines will do their best to relocate the planes, because there are too many ways they can be severely damaged even without taking off while stationary.

They aren’t tied down, but I seem to remember reading somewhere that they get fueled up to weigh them down more

The Southwest livery really sticks out in these photos. Is it possible that this is close to their entire fleet? If so wouldn't seem wise to have some diversity in your storage facilities?

Wikipedia puts their current fleet at 745 planes[1], and I'm not seeing more than 200 Southwest planes out there by my quick count. Could be close to a third of their fleet, which is still bonkers to think about.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines_fleet#Curre...

FYI: Southwest started small, but they're one of the largest US carriers now - a major. I remember when they were the scrappy startup, but:

"As of 2018, Southwest carries the most domestic passengers of any United States airline."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southwest_Airlines

LionAir, which had one of the 737 MAX accidents, has a similar story, and will probably end up being a similar size. Only started in 1999, most of the new aircraft model launches are done with them, and they have 234 planes on order.

How did the pilots get home after they parked these planes?

Google says it's just a 2 hour drive from there to LAX, or 4 hours on a bus. Maybe their airline just bussed them over to LAX?

The non-shuttered runway is also still active, enabling flights back to pilot home bases. Could look at ADS-B traffic sites (FlightAware and the like) for details.

I was wondering. All these planes sitting idle for months. Can they just one day restart without problems? Or do they need extra maintenance?

Yes. All commercial aircraft have regular maintenance + inspections at time + mileage intervals.

how is the maintenance of these planes being addressed?

in general, i wonder how much maintenance in overall infrastructure has been canceled or delayed and how that's going to affect things long term. it really brings into question the u.s.' "let's drag this out as long and as painfully as possible".

The Victorville airport is home to ComAv[1], which is an aircraft storage and maintenance company.

The aircraft are still subject to FAA inspection + maintenance interval requirements once they are ready to be flown again.

[1] http://www.comav.com/

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