Posted on 09/04/2021 12:42:17 PM PDT by DUMBGRUNT
Cargojet Airways. This 33-year old jet (C-FCAE) had racked up a staggering 140,249 flight hours as of April 2021.
Flying for German leisure carrier Condor, the busiest of these 28-year-old veterans (D-ABUC) had amassed 138,671 hours as of April 2021. Meanwhile, D-ABUA had 137,969 hours, and D-ABUB had 136,325.
This de Havilland Dash 8-100 turboprop belongs to Norwegian regional carrier Widerøe, and had completed a staggering 109,976 flight cycles in its 28 years of service as of March 2021. This works out at an average of 3,930 a year!
(Excerpt) Read more at simpleflying.com ...
Airline engines (for example the Rolls Royce Trent series) usually have TBOs of over 15000 hours. The record for maximum time for an engine on wing (i.e. use in aircraft before removal for overhaul) is well over 40,000 hours. https://aviation.stackexchange.com/questions/20745/what-is-the-lifespan-of-an-airline-engine
A Boeing 747 can endure about 35,000 pressurization cycles and flights—roughly 135,000 to 165,000 flight hours—before metal fatigue sets in. https://www.flexport.com/blog/decommissioned-planes-salvage-value/
i’m pretty sure there’s a few C-47s still out there in service
Yes, but a Swearingen can survive a midair T-bone and land without incident!
Yeah, it’s just half the fuselage, we’re fine.
Not commercial, but the oldest plane/oldest pilot I ever flew with was the air group’s C-47 and one of the last non-com pilot in the Corps, circa 1967.
That old master gunnery sergeant was as wizened as the old C-47, but likely not quite as old. Couple WWII veterans still chugging along.
There are some old 707 and B52 jets that have a lot of hours on them.
I saw an old movie years ago with Jimmy Stewart about metal fatigue on an airframe...sounds pretty dry but it was a great watch!
Flight tracker has D-ABUC in route to Cancun just east of Florida. https://www.flightradar24.com/data/aircraft/d-abuc
Is there an airline industry standard or benchmark (in terms of flight hours &/or flight cycles) which might indicate when "staggering" is likely to begin, for each type of engine or airframe?
;^)
Yup, that’s the film...thanks :-)
Will re-watch it tonight...
https://123movies.net/watch/zGW9wgvP-no-highway-in-the-sky.html
That plane was in the air for about 16 years.
—” might indicate when “staggering” is likely to begin”
An interesting comment from the article...
Also somewhere here on FR was an article about the B-52 airframes.
“It is the cycle count that is hardest on an airframe. Those Dash 8 classics were the last de Havilland designed aircraft and they were very well designed and rugged aircraft. I used to work at an airline that had the fleet leaders at the time and when the oldest airframe hit the 80k cycle mark, the airline didn’t want to invest in the extensive checks that would take the airplane to 120k. We scrapped two of them and Bombardier wanted us to cut out key structural sections and send them back to them for analysis. After Bombardier checked, tested, inspected the sections we sent, they told us that these pieces were in excellent condition. I wouldn’t doubt that the parts we sent will be used as criteria for airframe life extensions beyond 120k.”
A fellow I met long ago through my father’s Masonic circles worked for a local company that rebuilt and maintained aircraft engines for the civilian aviation market. He told me that the company had been started after WW2 by two former Army Air Force mechanics that had spent the war changing out engines after 500 hours of service, regardless of condition...and since so many new engines were coming from the States, the removed ones weren’t repaired or rebuilt, just “shoved in the corner”. After discharge, they started their company by buying up scads of those “replaced” engines at scrap prices and rebuilding them for resale.
Very few with piston engines. Most DC-3s have been reno’ed and turboprop added, from what I understand.
It is funny that you mentioned a C-47 / DC-3. As I was driving by YYC around noon, I saw one of Ken Borek Air Ltd.’s Turbine DC-3s coming in for a landing. I haven’t seen one landing or taking off in a very long time. They are very busy, just I’ve not been up by YYC when they were taking off or landing.
no doubt
but the airframes are still flying
waiting for the library to open one morning at college when one flew overhead, and all i wanted, was to be on that plane...
dint know where it was going and dint care
The book is even better than the movie.
Nevil Shute.
“The next three aircraft on the list are also 767s”
I saw something on the internet a few months ago. I don’t remember the name of the company, but this guy flew out of the North, Yellowknife, I think, and he talked about a company in California (?) the refurbished th planes and re-engines them with turboprop. There are still a great many up North. Yep, I’d like to fly in one someday.
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