Victorville, California, has one of the world’s biggest aviation ‘boneyards’, where decommissioned aircraft are picked apart for their useful remains.
Typically, they are stripped of high-value components, from engines and undercarriage to sundry spare parts, with what’s left sent to landfill.
But increasingly, aircraft recyclers are diversifying from parts harvesters to sustainability partners as aviation embraces the circular economy.
The Aircraft Fleet Recycling Association estimates 12,000 aircraft will be scrapped in the next 20 years, while business consultancy KPMG quotes around 1,100 annually by 2038.
“Aviation is under ever increasing scrutiny on its ESG impact,” says KPMG in a new report, ‘Circularity in Flight.’
“Despite often-seen images of plane ‘boneyards’ in the desert, the end of an aircraft’s service life does not equate to the end of its usefulness.
“Advances in disassembly processes have enabled recycling of nearly 80% of aircraft components, and over 90% of an aircraft’s weight can be reused or recycled.
“And it is not just components that are sought after. Aircraft are stripped for valuable metals like titanium, tungsten and copper. Even fluids, lubricants and the gases contained in fire extinguishers can be recovered and recycled.”
But recycling isn’t just focused on return to flight.
In Torrance, California, Dave Hall’s business, PlaneTags, turns skins of scrapped aircraft into keepsakes for enthusiasts, each telling the story of the plane from which it was sliced.
Historically, he says, aircraft skins were dumped. But he estimates his products have prevented countless tonnes of metal going to waste.
“Since 2015, we’ve documented over 200 aircraft and made over half a million tags.
“We have a full-time crew that just goes around the world buying aircraft for us to cut up. We’re the last guys in before there’s nothing left.”
One Boeing 747 alone yields at least 10,000 PlaneTags, says Hall, though he makes other collectibles ranging from credit and gift cards to jewellery.
Among the global airlines whose planes he has helped recycle are American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and Southwest Airlines, and long-gone iconic brands including PanAm.
Delta ordered 92,500 connected puzzle pieces from scrapped Boeing 747s to give to staff while American bought 135,000 PlaneTags from decommissioned Boeing MD-80s.
Recently, Hall’s team began cutting up an Antonov An-24 hijacked from Cuba to Florida in 2003 and visited Alaska to retrieve remains of a 1940s Lockheed Constellation flown by Air India, Qantas, BOAC, and Western Airlines.
Soon, he’ll get to work on two scrapped Airbus A380s.
In north-east England, aircraft engineer Stu Abbott started his business, Stu-Art, in 2012 after selling a refurbished seat from a scrapped Lufthansa jet. He had bought it to instal in his motorhome, but when it did not fit he advertised it online.
“Within three hours, it was sold,” says Abbott. But when calls kept coming from prospective customers, he began acquiring more parts, from seats and catering trolleys to wheels, wings, and eventually whole fuselages.
He now creates unique furniture or art including desks made from aircraft doors, boardroom tables from wings, couches from cowlings, and assorted seats, lamps and artifacts. He can barely keep up with demand.
“I’m always trying to find ways of recycling when planes or bits of planes come to the end of their useful life,” he says. “Customers love them. And I can help airlines meet their sustainability targets.”
But he sees a rapidly-emerging problem – lack of recycling options for items such as superseded seats and new-technology parts such as super-strong panels made of composite materials.
KPMG concurs.
“The most challenging aspects to process include alloys such as nickel and cobalt, and carbon fibre composites, which have become common in newer aircraft.
“Furthermore, some materials which have embedded flame retardants can contaminate recycling streams and raise health and safety concerns, and so are currently excluded from recycling.”
Abbott says challenges are already arising with dismantlement of composite-bodied planes including early Boeing 787s.
“It’s going to come to a point where you just can’t get rid of those parts,” he says. “No-one has an answer. So I’m desperate to see what I can do with composites.”
