Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Is there a Graveyard for Retired Bizjets?

Is there a Graveyard for Retired Bizjets?:
The short answer is YES! There are several 'graveyards,' mainly across the US. Bizjets typically have a lot longer life-cycle than airliners, so there are still plenty of 40-year-old models flying around; the retirement curve is low. However, there are accidents from time to time, and when they can't be repaired, they go off to one of the specialist dealers such as Dodsons in Rantoul, KS, White Industries at Bates City, MO or Atlanta Air Salvage (AAS) in Griffin,GA.
In February 2010 a heavy snowfall caused a hangar collapse at Washington Dulles Airport, wrecking around 10 executive jets. Some got repaired, some got scrapped. The fate of at least one is still undecided, Global Express msn 9177, seen here in April 2013 still at Dulles, prior to being shipped away. It's possible that given the attention to sealing the gaps, it has gone away for re-build, or it could surface at one of the aforementioned graveyards.

(Photo at Dulles 11-Apr-2013 by Nigel Howarth)
If an aircraft is beyond economical repair but one of the salvage firms sees some potential in the parts market, then it gets trucked out to their yard, and can linger on for years. Below is a selection seen recently at AAS' facility in Georgia. The aircraft in the centre is a Falcon 20 formerly operated in the Ukraine, present here for at least 4 years already.

(Photo at Griffin 14-Apr-2013 by Nigel Howarth)

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