Airport Dry-Docks 160 Grounded Jets : Airline bankruptcies and cutbacks have sent 160 planes into storage at Mojave Airport, the nation’s biggest parking lot for commercial aircraft withdrawn from service.

On the Antelope Valley Freeway, about 90 miles northeast of Los Angeles, the desert stretches for miles on every side. Gray mountains are etched in the horizon. Windmills twirl in the gusting wind.

Suddenly, on the bleak landscape dead ahead appear scores of huge silver jets, their tail fins gleaming in the sun.

It’s no mirage. It’s Mojave Airport, the nation’s biggest homeless shelter for grounded planes.

The logos on the planes reveal the names of bankrupt airlines. Eastern, Midway and Pan Am are no more. Continental is operating under bankruptcy court protection. Others aren’t bankrupt, but are struggling in a cutthroat market. Braniff ceased operations this month. USAir cut back its California routes last year. And British Airways--with its logos discreetly painted over--faces stiff competition in its transatlantic routes.

With the airline industry in turmoil, planes are being idled at an astonishing rate. What better place to store them than Mojave? The airport--a former Marine base and birthplace of the globe-circling Voyager aircraft--has the space, the support operations and dry air that inhibits corrosion.

Since February, 1991, the number of planes parked at Mojave has jumped from 20 to 160. With the aircraft stacked three to an acre, General Manager Dan Sabovich figures he has room for as many as 1,000 planes on the airport’s 3,000 acres.

He just might need it. A few planes have made it back into service, some have been sold and others dismantled and sold piece by piece. But many just sit there. And with the body count among airlines rising, new arrivals will probably outpace departures.

“A lot of these airplanes will probably never leave here,” Sabovich said.

For its parking services, the airport receives $300 to $500 per month, depending on the size of the plane, from the banks and leasing companies that own the aircraft. It then splits the fee with either Aerotest Inc. or OK Airline Support Inc., two airport tenants that maintain the planes by taping windows and intakes with foil to keep out dust, setting wheels on steel plates and replacing oil with a pickling solution that preserves the engine. For more money, the firms do more extensive upkeep and repairs.

For the airport, which has a budget of $5 million this year, the parking fees will add roughly $350,000 in annual revenue.

“Not that I want them here,” said Sabovich, who would rather see airlines return to health. The airport also derives revenues from rents paid by tenants who service the airline and aerospace industries, and from selling fuel.

Mojave isn’t the only airplane parking lot in the country, but it is the largest. Second in size is Evergreen Air Center in Marana, Ariz., where the number of parked planes has grown from 20 a couple of years ago to more than 100 today.

“It started with the recession,” said Dave Fowler, Evergreen’s president, recalling that the last big wave of jet parking occurred in the early 1980s, when deregulation resulted in many aircraft being grounded.

At Mojave, most of the planes are McDonnell Douglas DC-9s and MD-80s, and Boeing 727s, but there are also DC-10s, 737s, Lockheed L-1011s and smaller commuter planes. It has even had jumbo-sized 747s and 767s parked there; some, victims of bankruptcies and slow ticket sales, came direct from the factory.

What’s to become of the planes?

Most of the newer planes will eventually return to service. But the older aircraft will have a hard time finding new homes, at least in the United States, since they must compete against younger models that have far better fuel efficiency, more power, quieter engines and improved avionics.

“They’ll just sit out there and take the sun,” said Andrew Nocella, an analyst at Avmark Inc., an Arlington, Va., aviation consulting firm. “Hollywood will use them in a couple of movies here and there.”

There is a market for at least some of the older planes. The Federal Aviation Administration has bought a few of them, blown them up and studied the wreckage. And recently, foreign airlines have begun shopping at Mojave.

Venezuela’s Avensa Airlines, for instance, has bought eight planes there in the past 18 months. “This is the first place I come” to shop for used jets, said Victor Hernandez, an Avensa aircraft maintenance engineer.

With so many bankrupt airlines, Hernandez said, older planes are now selling at bargain-basement prices. For a 15-year-old DC-9 that Avensa can restore and fly for another 10 years, it might pay anywhere from $1.5 million to $3.5 million, compared to $20 million for a new plane, he said.

But of the two planes that Hernandez inspected on a recent visit to Mojave, only one met his standards. The other was consigned once again to its dusty parking space.

Rob Blankemeyer, vice president of asset management at Westinghouse Credit Corp., which has five DC-9s parked at Mojave, said Westinghouse won’t suffer any losses on its planes. That’s because the roughly 20-year-old planes were leased to Delta, which dutifully paid its rent until the leases recently expired, leaving Westinghouse with only a small investment remaining in the planes. Westinghouse now hopes to sell or lease the planes to airlines in Asia, Latin America or Africa.

But owners of jets that were leased to bankrupt carriers are another story, because the leases might have had several years remaining.

“That’s where you find people taking huge write-offs,” Blankemeyer said.

Some aircraft owners are finding that their planes are worth more in pieces.

At OK Airline, President Mike Potter said the company is dismantling four planes so their parts can be sold separately. Although younger planes have more modern technology, up to 75% of their parts haven’t changed, Potter explained.

“We get calls every day, “ he said. “ ‘What are you dismantling? What do you want for the landing gear?’ ”

OK Airline keeps 25% of the sale price for each part, with the balance going to the owner. The 2-year-old company expects to take in about $1 million in revenue this year.

Next door at Aerotest, business is soaring. The company expects its revenue to exceed $50 million this year, up from $18 million in 1990. The Irvine-based company has more than 500 workers at Mojave and charges anywhere from several hundred dollars for basic maintenance to more than $1 million for major overhauls.

Aerotest now has more than 100 planes in its storage-maintenance program.

“I suspect that this coming fall, we’ll be increasing on the inventory of aircraft by maybe half,” said Bobby Chevalier, Aerotest’s program manager for storage operations.

The jet parking boom at Mojave began early last year, about the same time that Eastern Airlines shut down. Someone from the airline called Sabovich and asked him if the airport had room to park some L-1011s. Sabovich said yes, and it took off from there.

The obscure airport, which lies next to the truck-stop town of Mojave, quickly gained fame in the aviation industry and has been visited by television crews from around the world. A few months ago, Virgin Atlantic Airways founder Richard Branson visited Mojave in connection with a British TV program on the airline industry.

Sabovich didn’t recognize the eccentric, longhaired billionaire, who was clad in jeans and a T-shirt, but Sabovich lent him a jacket for a tour of the airport anyway. Branson left with the jacket, which had been a gift to Sabovich from Voyager pilots Dick Rutan and Jeana Yeager. Weeks later--then aware of Branson’s identity--Sabovich sent a fax to Branson, asking for his jacket back. It was returned, with apologies.

Sabovich--a former Bakersfield farmer who counts famed aviator Chuck Yeager and Hilton Hotels Chairman Barron Hilton among his close friends--has managed the Mojave Airport since 1972.

Built as a Marine air base in 1942, the airport was turned over to Kern County in 1954, but fell into disrepair. When Sabovich came along, he proposed and won approval for the creation of an airport district, a public entity that would own the airport. Using federal and state grants, he lured new business to the airport.

The airport now rents space to more than two dozen businesses, including small paint shops, a civilian flight test center and divisions of such big companies as Teledyne and General Electric. The airport and its tenants employ 1,200 workers.

Cruising around the airport in his lemon-colored Cadillac, Sabovich points out the local landmarks. One hangar is filled with seats that were removed from an Air Canada 747 because they weren’t flame retardant. The seats became an embarrassment for the airport because of their offensive smell, and had to be aired out.

Driving past a dilapidated old C-133 cargo plane, Sabovich notes that it isn’t even worth dismantling. Yet the owner faithfully pays his rent each month.

“And we faithfully take his money,” Sabovich said.