ROSWELL, N.M. — 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. ADVERTISING ROSWELL, N.M. — Capt. Paul Wannberg
ROSWELL, N.M. — 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.
The new planes allow the airlines to save on fuel, now their biggest cost, while offering passengers more amenities — some for a fee. Passengers can plug in to work or be entertained by a seat-back TV and fly some international routes nonstop for the first time. And the commercial divisions of Boeing and Airbus get a steady stream of cash for years, which is a key reason investors have doubled the companies’ stock price in the past year.
The bulk of the planes are going to new or quickly growing airlines that serve an expanding middle class in India and the rest of Asia. The International Air Transport Association expects the number of passengers worldwide to grow 31 percent to 3.9 billion in the next four years.
U.S. airlines are buying as well. After suffering through the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, bankruptcies and recessions, they’re now strong enough financially to buy new jets. Domestic carriers spent $11.6 billion last year on capital improvements — including new planes — up from $5.2 billion in 2010.
With the price of fuel nearly 4 times what it was 10 years ago, airlines need to replace aging, gas-guzzlers — like the American 757 that Capt. Wannberg parked in the desert in Roswell.
The plane showed its age. Many armrests originally came with ashtrays. The seatback pocket on 27D was hanging by its last thread. And the window shade at 1F wouldn’t close. American would have had to spend $6 million to $10 million for heavy maintenance checks on the airframe, overhauls of the engines and other part replacements to keep the plane flying.
Instead, it went to Roswell. There, the dry air prevents the aluminum airframe from corroding. Spare parts will be harvested from the jet; eventually it will be chopped up for scrap metal.
It’s a fate many U.S. planes are facing. On Monday, Delta Air Lines retired the last of its DC-9s, a 35-year-old jet that had been the workhorse of U.S. airlines for decades. Over the past five years U.S. airlines have retired nearly 1,300 other planes — more than 20 a month — to various desert facilities, according to Flightglobal’s Ascend Online Fleets, which sells and tracks information about aircraft.
American’s old 757 will be replaced by one of 460 new single-aisle jets that the airline ordered in July 2011 — the largest single airplane order in history. The first one entered service on Sept. 16, and American is currently taking delivery of an additional new plane every week — models like the A321 from Airbus or the Boeing 737.
Southwest Airlines, JetBlue Airways, Spirit Airlines and just about every other U.S. carrier has a large order in place. Nearly 1,500 new planes will be delivered to U.S. airlines by Airbus and Boeing over the next decade. Several hundred smaller regional jets are also on order with other manufacturers.
“We are producing twice as many airplanes today as we were 10 years ago,” said Mary Prettyman, Airbus’ vice president of strategic marketing for the Americas. It will take Airbus eight years to fill all its current orders. “It’s unprecedented.”
