| Subject: Re: A few photos from the El Mirage boneyard |
| From: Ron |
| Date: 15/12/2008, 01:43 |
| Newsgroups: alt.conspiracy.area51,rec.aviation.military |
On Dec 14, 1:51 pm, m...@sushi.com wrote:
On Dec 13, 10:19 pm, "Lumpy" <lu...@digitalcartography.com> wrote:
m...@sushi.com wrote:
I have one more plane to add from the boneyard. I'll add a followup
post. I also took some photos at Victorville, which also has a
boneyard. Nothing particularly interesting though.
What do they eventually do with the old "bones"?
Seems like they'd make really groovy camper pods.
Stick the Apache cockpit on an old chevy truck
frame/wheels and tow it to the campsite.
Craig 'Lumpy' Lemke
www.n0eq.com
I've asked the question why these planes site in the boneyard to the
point that they will never fly again. One story I got was the planes
in question were parts of lawsuits. So the things sit there while the
lawyers make love. Another story is they wait for commodity prices to
be optimal to salvage the planes. That sounded good to me until the
commodities market went through the roof and the planes just sat
there.
There are so many 741s in boneyards it isn't funny.
Well there are lots of possible reasons. Some had a repair needed
that was would cost more than it would be worth, so the only option
was selling for parts Some may have been too expensive to operate
due to fuel burns, and would be cheaper to buy/lease new ones
instead. Or it could be that noise requirements made the planes
worth little, since it would cost so much, if it was even possible to
modify to meet Stage 3 requirements. Or could be a situation where
RVSM requirements cost so much, that would just be better to scrap the
plane.
A Lear 23 had noise issues, high fuel burn, and then needs RVSM if it
wants to fly about 27000, so that basically makes all of them
worthless.
737-200s, 727s (non-freighter) are basically worth just their raw
worth to sell to a scrapper. There has even been a 777 that was
scrapped and parted out recently. A lot of 747-100s and 200s too for
that matter. Even the USAF is retiring its 737-200s used in JANET
and updating to newer ones.