How Do They Do It? – Airplane Recycling
A recycled jetliner produces tons of metal and millions of dollars in parts, but a mistake could cost hundreds of lives. Here’s how the company that salvaged the plane from Lost does its destructive business.
A car’s typically just parted out once and then scrapped at the end of its life, but a jumbo jet is full of thousands of valuable parts that will be salvaged or recycled numerous times. One passenger plane may transition into service transporting packages, or off to commercial service in Africa, and then the fuselage used for training purposes.
“In short, it’s not like the auto [recycling] business,” says aviation archeologist and plane recycling expert Doug Scroggins, who was responsible for recycling the airliner that’s the centerpiece for ABC’s Lost and serves as managing director for ARC Aeropsace Industries. “If you sell an engine off an aircraft and it crashes, you’re going to be spending a great deal of time in jail.”
Click “next” to go through the process of recycling an aircraft, or go here to see this in one long post.
There are large aircraft recyclers in many countries, typically located at commercial airports or former military bases. These facilities include a runway large enough to support a jetliner and plenty of space for storing planes. Not all vehicles are immediately scrapped, but just stored until the plane’s owners decide what to do with them.
The engine is the single most valuable part of an aircraft and can be resold whole or parted out. A used engine is worth millions sold directly and many are rented out hourly for prices around $20-25,000 per month
