Posted on 04/17/2011 6:31:10 AM PDT by Racehorse
A well-maintained plane can fly for decades. Older planes do need more repairs, but experts say an aircraft's age never has been the cause of a passenger death. Pilot training and fatigue, as well as frequency of aircraft maintenance, are larger safety issues.
The average age of jets flown by U.S. airlines is 11 years old, slightly above the world average of 10 but far shy of the 28 for Venezuela's fleet — the oldest of any country with more than a handful of jets.
Theoretically, a jet could continue flying indefinitely as long as an airline maintained it, says Bill Voss, president and CEO of the Flight Safety Foundation. The costs eventually would be prohibitive, though. Deciding when to mothball an airplane is usually a matter of the economics of the individual airline.
Older planes need more frequent inspections, and bigger and costlier repairs. That means less time in the sky carrying paying passengers. Besides being cheaper to maintain, newer planes offer substantial fuel savings, and passengers enjoy features such as personal TVs.
“Aircraft become impractical a long time before they become unsafe,” Voss says.
SNIP
Age isn't the only factor when it comes to safety. Each takeoff and landing cycle — and the pressurization and depressurization associated with it — adds stress to the skin of the plane. Aircraft that fly short, frequent routes go through more of these cycles than planes flying long distances. In 1988, a 19-year-old Aloha Airlines Boeing 737-200 that had made frequent, short hops among the Hawaiian islands lost a large part of its roof. Corrosion and metal fatigue were to blame.
(Excerpt) Read more at mysanantonio.com ...
At various points in their lives, military planes are sent to facilities that tear them down, replace wire harnesses, do compete and thorough structural checks, etc. When the planes return to the squadron they are like new. I expect they do the same with airliners...or, at least, I HOPE they do the same...:)
The Space Shuttle’s life was 100 flights.The five shuttles flew 140 times. Why are they being retired? Congression age and IQ are 9!
They also said the Shuttle would be cheap access to space but now a flight costs close to a billion dollars. All the Shuttle proponents did was lie through their teeth.
—the B-52’s apppear to be good for another fifty or so—
Northwest’s fleet of DC-9s comes to mind....
DC-3’s are still flying.
Not worry.
http://www.strangecosmos.com/content/item/174858.html#theContent
Obama wants everybody to take the train ....
Train, bicycle, or walk. He wants America to be more like China or Cuber.
DC-3’s aren’t pressurized aircraft. Do you know how much stress pressurization puts on an aircraft?
“—the B-52’s apppear to be good for another fifty or so—”
Yea, to 2040 (80 years old) at this point...but probably longer after that, since we no longer see a need to build bombers in such a peaceful world....
Actually (at least back in the '70s), bringing a plane back from depot was scary, they were so buggy - about four times as many malfunctions as on a typical training flight. It usually took a couple of flights for local maintenance to glue 'em back together.
...looking for a better link; sorry...
The old Eastern Airlines flew notorious buckets-of-bolts....only to be outdone by Aloha’s interisland fleet.
Cannot get the close paren. ‘)’ on the link.
Do so in the url by hand and it’ll get to the right page.
Milt Miner worked on cyclic fatigue of multiple levels of stress...
Thanks for the link, Sasquatch!
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