Winner of Nine Pulitzer Prizes

Originally published August 10, 2014 at 3:58 PM | Page modified August 10, 2014 at 4:13 PM
The worlds largest plane-maker is exploring ways to make money from the end of a jetliners life. It
may be in the market for a salvage company that recycles engines, landing gear and other components
stripped from scrapped jetliners.
By Julie Johnsson
Bloomberg News
Boeing sees potential riches in the aircraft that land in aviations junkyards as airlines ditch older
jets for models that burn less fuel.
The worlds largest plane-maker is exploring ways to make money from the end of a jetliners life. It
may be in the market for a salvage company that recycles engines, landing gear and other
components stripped from scrapped jetliners, said John Wojick, a senior vice president for global
sales and marketing.
Buying such a business would allow Chicago-based Boeing greater control over how its jet
components find a second life. For now, the commercial aviation-services unit, which manages
maintenance, repairs and spare-parts inventory for airlines around the world, contracts out the job
of dismantling the used planes Boeing buys to spur orders of its new 747-8 jumbos.
Thats been a profitable business for us, Wojick said in an interview at the Farnborough
International Air Show in England last month. The question becomes should Boeing get into that
business ourselves.
The $3.2 billion market for used parts is growing as airlines and lessors discard planes a decade or
more before the end of their 30-year service lives.
The sum of the pieces can outweigh a jets depressed resale value, and owning a so-called
parting-out company would give Boeing more control of its own components.
Boeing has a strategic decision to make, said Kevin Michaels, global managing director of
aviation consulting and services with ICF International, a Fairfax, Va.-based consultant. This is
one of their Achilles heels.
The scrap-aircraft industry is a mix of closely held operators such as Aircraft Demolition, which
operates at the Pinal Airpark in Arizona known for open-air storage, and publicly traded companies
like AAR, with a market value of $1.07 billion.
In January, Fort Lauderdale, Fla.-based GA Telesis said it raised $500 million from clients advised
by Wafra Capital Partners, an investment adviser controlled by the government of Kuwait, to invest
in dissembled aircraft and other engine and aircraft-part opportunities.
Michaels said he sees a strong possibility Boeing will change its spare-parts strategy and may
make a major purchase. The stocks 13 percent decline this year through Aug. 6 was the most on the
Dow Jones industrial average. A complicating factor: Acquisition targets may be overpriced as
investors flock to the secondhand market for aircraft parts, Michaels said.
Theres a risk for Boeing, too, because dealing in used parts that are certified to be as good as new
and as much as 50 percent cheaper could undermine its Aviall subsidiary, according to
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consultant Robert Mann of R.W. Mann & Co. in Port Washington, N.Y. Aviall is the largest global
seller of new aircraft parts.
The lure is the 6,000 jetliners that are expected to be driven out of service over the next decade by
new arrivals promising leaps in fuel savings, like Boeings 737 MAX and Airbus A320neo,
according to a study commissioned by the Aircraft Fleet Recycling Association. Boeing co-founded
the Washington-based trade group in 2006.
Parts stripped out of the frame of a single-aisle jet like a 737 are valued at an average $1.5 million
while components from a widebody are typically worth $2.5 million, according to a study by the
trade group and Atlanta-based consultant TeamSAI. Engines are valuable, yielding an average of
$1.5 million for the smaller jets and $6 million for twin-aisle aircraft.
Parts are in high demand and people are looking at ways to save money, said Tim Zemanovic,
co-founder of Burnsville, Minn.-based Aircraft Demolition. Popular components for resale include
propulsion systems from engines, auxiliary power units, actuators, black boxes, cockpit
instruments and even windshields, Zemanovic said.
Those are big, very expensive items, Zemanovic said. One windshield could go for $25,000.
About 1,000 planes are expected to be retired annually by 2023, more than double the average of
410 a year that were grounded from 2000 through 2009, according to an analysis by ICF
International.
The retirement wave is the flip-side of an order binge over about the past decade. Boeing and
Toulouse, France-based Airbus have amassed a record combined backlog of about 11,000 jets with
a list value of almost $990 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg Intelligence.
Some Boeing competitors and clients already have bustling dissembling and parts-trading units.
Airbus owns a stake in Tarmac Aerosave, a French company that stores, repairs and tears down
aircraft. Montreal-based Bombardier Inc. works with Magellan Aviation Group to dismantle old
aircraft like the CRJ100 regional jet, and the two largest lessors, AerCap Holdings NV and General
Electrics aircraft-leasing arm, are also involved in the parting-out of planes.
Delta Air Lines, the worlds third-largest carrier, is trimming maintenance costs by acquiring older
planes on the cheap for parts.
The Atlanta-based airline bought 23 MD-80 aircraft last year from Swedens SAS for this purpose
and has selectively purchased others, said Michael Thomas, a spokesman.
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