Lockheed’s Old, Retired L-1011s Finding New Careers
After two decades and roughly 20 million miles, the dusty L-1011 jumbo jet sat in a hangar in Kingman, Ariz., as much a relic of its era as a World War I dirigible.
Where airlines saw a geriatric jet, Gareth Stenner saw a flying hospital.
In June, the circa 1974 plane--equipped with $16 million in surgical suites, a dental office and a medical classroom--begins its first mission in El Salvador for Operation Blessing, a charity organized by evangelist Pat Robertson’s Christian Broadcasting Network.
“This is a new career for an old bird,” Lockheed aeronautics division President Skip Bowling told Stenner, who manages the L-1011 project.
The transition from mothballed machine to flying hospital reflects a larger change in the aircraft industry. Major airlines have started phasing out their L-1011 fleets, making the line the first of the jumbo jets to be replaced by smaller, more efficient and lower-maintenance aircraft.
Of the three jumbo jets of the 1970s--the L-1011, the McDonnell Douglas DC10 and the still-larger Boeing 747--only the 747 is still in production.
Trans World Airlines and Delta, which has the largest L-1011 fleet at 54 planes, announced earlier this year they are replacing the aging jets.
Some of the castoffs have been converted and found new jobs.
Among them: in-flight refueling tankers for the British Royal Air Force; an executive aircraft for Jordan’s King Hussein, a certified pilot who usually flies the jet himself; an airborne launch vehicle for the X-34 and Pegasus satellite rockets created by Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va. Many others have been converted to cargo planes.
The aging planes come relatively cheap. Operation Blessing paid $4 million for its L-1011, although prices range up to $12 million. The Boeing 767-300ER planes that Delta is buying to replace the Lockheed jets run from $97 million to $107 million.
But while some L-1011s have found second lives, analysts say their days are numbered.
“The L-1011s are gone,’ said Jordan A. Greene, president of Avmark Services Ltd., a Miami-based aircraft consulting firm. “It’s just a matter of scheduling which ones go out the door first.”
Among the L-1011’s limitations:
* It has high operating costs. The 500 series version of the L-1011 costs $3,958 for each hour of flight time, compared with $2,251 for the 200 series 767 jet, according to Federal Aviation Administration figures.
* It needs a three-member crew instead of two, and its three engines use more fuel than newer twin-engine planes. An L-1011 uses 2,500 gallons of fuel each hour, compared with 1,730 gallons for the twin-engine 767.
* It is unlikely to meet federal noise regulations by 2000 without expensive retrofits.
* Airlines like to talk about the youth of their jets. The average age of Delta Air Lines’ fleet is 10.9 years. The youngest L-1011 is 13 years old, the oldest 24.
“You don’t want to have something that’s exceptionally old,” said Kathleen Walsh, spokeswoman for Beverly Hills-based International Lease Finance Corp., which rents jets to airlines. Of the company’s 300 planes, four are L-1011s.
* Mechanics might run out of parts.
Lockheed expects to end its L-1011 maintenance business within the decade. Company officials say Lockheed earns sales “in the low millions” annually on the maintenance operation.
“Eventually you reach an economic point where it’s not worth the time and effort to keep making the parts,” said Jeff Rhodes, spokesman for the renamed Lockheed Martin Corp., based in Bethesda, Md.
Lockheed stopped making commercial aircraft when the 252nd L-1011 rolled off the assembly line in 1983. The reasoning was painfully obvious to company officials.
“The short and sweet answer is that it almost bankrupted the company,” Rhodes said.
Lockheed designed the plane to use a Rolls-Royce engine, but when production time arrived, Rolls was bankrupt, causing Lockheed costly delays. It took a $400-million loan guarantee from the federal government, which was never asked to make good on the offer, to get the production line moving.
“We were literally selling them at a lower price than it cost us to make them,” Rhodes said.
Of the 252 L-1011s built from 1972 through 1983, 228 are still listed in flying condition, including many mothballed in hangars like the one in Arizona, according to Lockheed. Twenty-one have been retired due to age. Three were destroyed in crashes.
