The world's idle jet fleet has spiralled up to a record 2,860 airliners as operators slash capacity in the wake of the downturn and a fall in demand.
Data compiled from Flightglobal's ACAS database for our annual airliner census reveals that the parked fleet of Western-built jets has increased by almost 30% over the past 12 months, or 637 aircraft. It is now at its highest-ever proportion (13.1% - see graph) of the total fleet, which as of July stood at 21,739 aircraft.
The scale of the growth in stored aircraft is evidenced by the fact that over the past 12 months, the number of active Western-built jets has only increased by 165 units - despite the fact that the airframers' output is heading to record levels and 1,048 new jet airliners were delivered during that period.
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Between July last year and March this year the active fleet contracted from 18,719 units to 18,674. It has subsequently increased to 18,884 aircraft.
In addition to the stored fleet growth, ACAS records at least 230 Western-built jet retirements (ie broken-up for spares) over the last 12 months - a 15% increase on the previous year. It is unclear how many more of the 2,900 jets that are idle have in reality flown their last service.
Teal Group's vice president analysis Richard Aboulafia predicts that "somewhere between 1,500 and 2,000 are permanent residents". Reasons for this include high fuel prices and the availability of sales financing for new airliners: "With governments ramping up financing support, they are helping to obsolete middle-aged jets," he says.
"It's like governments' cash-for-clunkers car financing programmes, except that in this case the jets being rendered obsolete are far from clunkers."
The US desert storage sites such as Marana in Arizona and Mojave and Victorville in California have seen their stockpiles of unwanted airliners balloon, as is traditional in a downturn.
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During 2002-3, in the wake of 9/11, the idle fleet soared by more than 50% to just over 2,100 aircraft, or 12.5% of the total fleet.
Financial analyst UBS Research reports that North America and Europe's share of the parked airliner fleet has increased by 10 percentage points over the past year. In July 2008, both regions accounted for 58% of the total parked fleet, but this has now increased to 68%.
"While all regions are parking aircraft, we have found North American and European operators to have parked the most, including a majority of the parked in-production aircraft," says UBS.
Source: Flight International
