in April, the Aviation Circularity Consortium, including Australian flag carrier Qantas and other groups, was created as a “joint mission to accelerate supply chain decarbonisation.”
The plan is to use the 8,000 “end-of-life retired aircraft” that are sitting in deserts, jungles, and storage yards across the globe. Another 11,000 are expected to be available over the next 10 years.
According to the consortium, the thousands of decommissioned aircraft offer “a new source of valuable circular materials” and address the “significant waste pollution challenges to the shrinking legal boneyards around the world.”
These “graveyards” started filling up during the pandemic when airlines had to make drastic cost-cutting changes, including furloughing pilots, cutting routes, and indefinitely storing hundreds of planes in the desert.
One of these facilities is Pinal Air Park in Marana, Arizona — a small town located about 90 miles southeast of Phoenix.
As airlines started to shrink in 2020, hundreds of planes from all over the world flew to the 2,080-acre airpark.
With the influx, Pinal had to take special precautions to ensure the aircraft was ready to fly once travel eventually rebounded.
Because of this, Ascent Aviation Services — the largest aircraft service provider on the airfield — had to beef up its staff to maintain the constant arrivals.
Leasing companies were also filling the airfield after buying up inexpensive planes sold during COVID and storing them at Pinal.
Inside a remote Arizona aircraft boneyard storing nearly 300 planes grounded by the pandemic
