Any technique sooner or later wears out, breaks down or becomes unusable in any other way. When the cherished moment comes, most of the cars set off on their last journey. Aircraft are no exception. However, are they just written off to landfill? After all, an airplane is much more complicated than a car, and hardly worth putting under pressure in the most banal way.
Airplanes, like sea vessels, serve for a long time being a product of high-tech production. Some airlines change cars every 5-6 years. However, such a short period of time, as a rule, are aircraft that have already managed to change one or even two owners. The general service life of most flying machines tends to be 20 years. Of course, the maximum service life is determined by the build quality of the aircraft and the fact whether it received serious damage during use. Nevertheless, the day of "well-deserved rest" sooner or later comes, and here the fate of the planes varies greatly.
1. Reuse
Perhaps this is the rarest thing that happens to planes that have been used up. After all, these machines can no longer fly and should not. However, many companies buy old boards to build something on them. The simplest example is the construction of hotels, cafes and restaurants on the basis of an aircraft fuselage. There are also more exotic examples of the use of old cars. For example, VirginGalactic once bought several decommissioned Boeing 747 aircraft and made a spacecraft out of them. Finally, some rare or outstanding machines can be used to create museum pieces.
2. Time to the cemetery
Since the aircraft is an extremely high-tech product, in most cases it cannot be simply taken and thrown into a landfill. For this reason, planes are sent to special cemeteries, where they are left to vegetate in the open air. Today, there is a huge number of aircraft cemeteries in the world, where a cosmic number of cars are waiting for them to be partially or completely disposed of. Ideally, an aircraft graveyard is just a temporary dwelling place. Unfortunately, "temporality" has a custom of being delayed indefinitely due to financial and bureaucratic issues.
3. Disposal and rationalization
Ideal for a used car. A passenger airliner is several tons of ferrous metal, many kilograms of non-ferrous metal, including gold and silver. In addition, it is rubber, plastic, glass. All this good is valuable. Most importantly, aircraft recycling protects nature from pollution. Unfortunately, many airlines do not consider it necessary to spend funds on recycling, preferring to simply drive the plane into a cemetery, and finding a buyer for a car for dismantling for secondary product is not so easy. Most often, aircraft are subjected to partial scrapping: all units, equipment and expensive components are removed from them. Some are sent for recycling, others are checked and reused. This is because most aircraft equipment has a shelf life longer than the aircraft itself.
If you want to know even more interesting things, then you should read about 5 legends about Soviet aviation, which continue to exist among the inhabitants.