Where More Jets Get Grounded
One of the busiest airports in the country these days is nestled in one of the most unlikely places in the desert, except that most airplanes here land but never take take off.
The Mojave Airport, about 100 miles north of downtown Los Angeles, is home to the nation’s largest graveyard for commercial passenger jets, and in one of the most telling reflections of the airline industry’s woes, business here has been booming.
“We’re looking at leveling more ground to accommodate more airplanes,” said Dan Sabovich, general manager of the airport, where nearly 200 airplanes, including seven 747 jumbo jets, now sit along the runway with their engines and windows covered with tape. “It’s not exactly the way we want to make money, but the planes have to go somewhere.”
In the aftermath of the devastating terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the airline industry has been in a dizzy free fall as skittish passengers stay off flights, prompting airlines to postpone orders for new airplanes and take many older airplanes out of service.
Since the Sept. 11 attacks, the number of airplanes landing at the airport to be parked or scrapped has increased tenfold, even surpassing the rate that the airport experienced in the last airline downturn a decade ago. Planes flown by virtually all major airlines are represented, from American and Delta to Continental and US Airways.
“We are getting a lot, more than before,” said Sabovich, who has been managing the airport since 1971. “It just seems worse this time.”
The number of commercial passenger aircraft taken out of service worldwide could reach 2,000 planes in 2002 compared with the record 1,100 already parked as of Sept. 1, according to Airclaims Ltd., a London-based aviation valuation consulting firm.
The company said 21 airlines have already announced since the Sept. 11 attacks that they will retire or dispose of 556 aircraft. The majority of them, 280, are Boeing Co.’s single-aisle planes. Last month, Boeing cut its forecast for the number of new airplanes it expected to deliver next year from 500 to 400 as it announced it planned to slash up to 30,000 jobs.
“The attacks of Sept. 11 and the war--we don’t know what else to call it--have dramatically changed the outlook for commercial aerospace,” Byron K. Callan, a Merrill Lynch & Co. analyst, warned in his report to investors last week. “Cutbacks in scheduled airline service will result in a surge in parked aircraft.”
At Southern California Logistics Airport in Victorville, the other large compound for storing and maintaining large commercial jets, the number of planes coming in for storage has grown significantly since Sept. 11, according to officials there. There are now 180 planes parked at the airport, even though the facility opened just last year, said Dowgall Agan, principal of Stirling Airports International, which manages the airport.
“Here we go again,” said Jerri Sabovich, the wife of Mojave Airport’s longtime manager, summing up the collective response of many in the aerospace industry. “Isn’t that sad?”
Sabovich, known as the first lady of the airport, recalled the last time there was an influx of aircraft a decade ago. In 1991, the number of planes parked at the airport jumped from 20 to more than 200 as the Persian Gulf War pushed what was then an already teetering economy over the edge and air travel plummeted. Many of the parked airplanes never made it out of Mojave.
“What was sad was all the ones that were left behind. They looked like cattle going to the slaughterhouse,” she said.
Unwanted planes are cut apart in a scrap yard next to the airport where a crane with a claw-like device crumbles the remaining sheets of aluminum and places them in large recycling containers. The open-air compound resembles a junkyard with parts of planes, from their nose and tail to passenger seats, are strewn about.
Airplanes had been coming at a steady clip even before the Sept. 11 attacks, Sabovich, the manager, said. The airport saw more than 60 planes arrive between the beginning of the year and the end of August, or an average of one every three or four days.
But in the last two weeks, the rate has shot up to six or seven per day, and last Monday, a record 19 airplanes landed at the airport, many of them to be idled for a while or turned into scrap. The airport is already reaching its record of 200 airplanes that were parked in the early 1990s.
“It’s cheaper to park them than to fly them,” Sabovich said. “We probably have more airplanes on the ground than at LAX.”
It costs airlines and leasing companies $500 a month to park a wide-body jet and $250 for a single-aisle plane such as the Boeing 737.
“It’s cheaper than parking your car at LAX,” Sabovich said.
For a while, during the airline boom in the late 1990s many planes were flying into Mojave to be refurbished or undergo maintenance at one of the aviation service companies at the airport.
But most planes these days are getting “pickled,” Sabovich said, referring to the process of draining the plane of fuel and oil and then taping up openings such as doors, windows and engines for what could be an extended stay.
Some newer planes eventually do reenter service, typically after it is sold at a bargain-basement price to a foreign or start-up airline, but most are disassembled for parts, Sabovich said.
Used-plane prices have dropped in the last few weeks, responding to the deluge of planes being grounded. In addition to Boeing’s cutbacks, the European consortium Airbus Industrie has scaled back future production plans.
Older planes sent to Mojave to be retired end up in the scrap yard or ignobly cut up into parts used as novelty items. A businessman recently purchased two Lockheed Martin L1011 wide-body jets and one McDonnell Douglas DC-10, before flying them to Taiwan and then turning them into restaurants.
Mojave’s boom represents airline’s doom, said Richard Aboulafia, aviation analyst with the Fairfax, Va.-based Teal Group. “This is equivalent to the unemployment line for airplanes,” he said. “This is a good, tangible indicator that times are rough for the airline industry.”
With the surge in parked airplanes, the airport has also drawn some unusual attention in recent weeks. During a tour for a reporter, a middle-aged man holding a hand-held telescope was spotted standing behind the airport fence topped with barbed wire.
Asked what he was doing, the man with a British accent said he belonged to a European club that kept track of airplanes by reading the tail numbers. Asked why, he smiled and walked away.
“They’ve been coming around a lot these days,” Sabovich said. “It’s kind of spooky.”
