Retirement for Planes? : PLANES: Should They Be Put Out to Pasture?
Should there be a mandatory retirement age for jets?
This question has been raised from time to time, most recently in the aftermath of an incident earlier this year where an Aloha Airlines plane lost part of its roof in flight.
The Federal Aviation Administration, which has also questioned whether there should be a mandatory retirement age for planes, recently held a meeting on aging aircraft with representatives of United States and foreign airlines, as well as airline manufacturers.
There is no mandatory age now at which planes are retired, and the FAA is still collecting data on whether this policy should be continued. “Planes have been in service longer than many people anticipated,” an FAA spokesperson said. “This is not a new issue, but the Aloha situation put the spotlight on it. At this point there is no plan to issue a formal proposal on this subject.”
Meanwhile, the FAA issued directives that have tightened maintenance and repair procedures for 737s (the Aloha plane was a 19-year-old 737), as well as beefing up inspection and research programs that include the human factor in maintenance. The subject of metal fatigue and erosion for all planes making many takeoffs and landings is also receiving special attention.
Report on the Incident
The National Transportation Safety Board is putting together its report on the Aloha incident, which is expected to cover the subject of aging aircraft. This report will probably be released in the first part of 1989.
In its last report on this subject, made to the U.S. Senate a couple of years ago, the NTSB questioned whether the system of inspecting planes was adequate to discover problems caused by aging.
Observers have questioned whether it just wouldn’t be safer to retire planes at a certain age rather than depend on continuing inspection. However, airline executives have indicated that placing limits on the lives of planes would result in higher fares to offset the cost of buying new planes.
Airlines spend millions of dollars to rejuvenate their fleets. But if deadlines were imposed on replacing certain or all aircraft, this already astronomical expenditure by airlines could be even greater.
New jets, it has also been argued, save the carriers money over the long haul because they are more fuel-efficient than the planes they are replacing.
Airplanes are designed, certificated and manufactured according to FAA regulations to provide many years of useful life and not fail catastrophically from fatigue or corrosion damage, the NTSB said. But designs are made with the presumption that the planes will sustain such damage during their service life, the board added.
The economic life of a plane is not based primarily on safety considerations, according to the board. The safety factor comes primarily through the inspection of the planes, and as planes age they require more frequent inspections.
To remain airworthy, planes have to be operated, maintained and inspected according to an FAA-approved maintenance reliability program. Upgrading of this program is likely, as a result of the forthcoming NTSB report.
Planes naturally have to be used to be economical. The longer planes are in service and flown and the more takeoffs and landings they make, the greater the chance of fatigue cracking and corrosion.
Corrosion is also highly dependent on the environment where planes are operated. For example, planes used near salt air or sulfur-producing factories develop corrosion problems before they reach the fatigue limits of their structures, according to the NTSB. “Thus the extended use of airplanes could result in greater risk to the public if these airplanes are not adequately inspected and maintained,” the NTSB report said.
According to a spokesman for Lockheed, a major airplane manufacturer, “Aircraft can last forever, theoretically, as long as they are properly inspected and maintained. But the maintenance costs for a jet can become prohibitive just as they might for a car. It becomes more economical to buy a new jet than pour more money into the existing plane. At this point the airlines decide when they want new jets, and some airlines tend to hold onto planes longer than others.”
Sold to Serve Again
Even when an airline buys new jets, it doesn’t mean that the jets being replaced go out of service. “These older jets may be sold or leased to other carriers, and some wind up overseas,” said the Lockheed spokesman.
Lockheed began delivery of its L-1011 jet in 1972, and none of the more than 240 of these jets put into service has been retired, the spokesman said.
“The average age of airline fleets is growing,” said an NTSB spokesman. “And there’s a lot of resistance to retirement of planes in the industry.”
A domestic airline point of view came from a TWA spokesman: “As there are no federal rules on how long airlines can keep using their jets, we fly our planes as long as they meet our standards and are safe.”
TWA has 219 planes in its fleet, and the average age of its aircraft is 13.3 years, the spokesman added.
“The average age of our fleet is 8 1/2 years, which is the youngest in the industry,” said Vince Durocher, district director of marketing for Delta Airlines. “We try not to keep a jet longer than eight or nine years, but there isn’t any systematic method or formula. It’s how the jets fit into our fleet and what planes come onto the market that might be more suitable.
“For example, we have L-1011s older than 8 1/2 years, but we might keep them longer because they are wide-body planes that are hard to replace.”
The average age of the U.S. airline fleet is about 12 years.
Replacement Factors
A spokesman for Lufthansa said that the average age of its fleet is 6.9 years. “It’s a longstanding Lufthansa policy to replace the fleet continuously. The first five 747s we bought were replaced very early, within about five years, when later models became available. We kept models of the 727 longer, as there weren’t good models to replace them with until the 737-300s and Airbus 310s became available.”
Replacement of the airline’s jets depends on several factors, the Lufthansa spokesman said.
“These factors include what the maintenance costs are, how good the used aircraft market is, our route system and what planes are most efficient for that route, what new models are available and the availability of financing.”
Chances are that a lot more will be heard on this issue in coming years. Venerable DC-3s are still being flown safely around the world, and more and more “mature” jets are likely to be used by airlines on certain routes in certain countries.
“This is an issue of relatively recent vintage,” said Con Hitchcock of the Aviation Consumer Action Report in Washington, D.C. “I’m not sure anyone has the answer as yet, but we’ll be interested in seeing what the technical experts come up with.”
