Utrangerte fly

Airlines go on a record new jet shopping spree

 















In this photo Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2013, photo, engine-less American Airlines jets sit parked at the airport in Roswell, New Mexico. Airlines are on the largest jet buying spree in the history of aviation, ordering more than 8,200 new planes with the old planes bing sent to the desert where the dry air prevents the aluminum airframe from corroding and spare parts can be harvested or the old jets get chopped up for scrap metal. 

ROSWELL, N.M. (AP) - Capt. Paul Wannberg glides an old Boeing 757 over the New Mexico desert, lining up with the runway. A computerized voice squawks elevation warnings. Forty feet. Thirty. Twenty. Ten. Touchdown.

Outside the cockpit window sit nearly a hundred airplane carcasses, perfectly lined up. They are jets that nobody wants anymore. And - after 26,057 takeoffs and landings - this 24-year-old American Airlines plane is about to join them.

"This is my first time here, and it's a sad place," First Officer Robert Popp tells the control tower. Airlines used to store planes in the desert during slow travel months. Sometimes, unwanted jets would be sold to carriers in Russia or Africa. Today, a man on the other end of the radio responds, "they're chopping them up."

Airlines are on the largest jet-buying spree in the history of aviation, ordering more than 8,200 new planes with manufacturers Airbus SAS and The Boeing Co. in the past five years. There are now a combined 24 planes rolling off assembly lines each week, up from 11 a decade ago. And that rate is expected to keep climbing.