I met Captain Sullenberger in January 2010 just before he retired. I was passing through Newark and recognized him as he walked towards me. After all the fuss he was probably pleasantly surprised at someone who just smiled, shook his hand, and carried on walking.
They put a $100M plane in a museum..... was it beyond repair or did the insurance pay out ?
The thing ditched in estuary water, the term beyond economic repair springs to mind.
Sea water in **Everything** so not just a new wiring loom, new engines, new cabin fittings, new avionics, but latent salt corrosion hidden in rivet holes and behind structure, nope, once you decide to ditch in water the aircraft is your insurers problem!
Regards, Dan.
Yeah, I literally can’t think of a single component that could be safely reused after a ditching in salty or brackish water.
They put a $100M plane in a museum.....
Saving 154 people (as well as your own ass)... priceless.
The thing ditched in estuary water, the term beyond economic repair springs to mind.
Sea water in **Everything** so not just a new wiring loom, new engines, new cabin fittings, new avionics, but latent salt corrosion hidden in rivet holes and behind structure, nope, once you decide to ditch in water the aircraft is your insurers problem!
Regards, Dan.
This plane actually CRASHED! Although there wasn't MAJOR structural damage, there was quite a bit of damage. It hit hard on pretty thick ice.
That's BEFORE the water got into everything. There's some sort of unofficial FAA rule that parts off any actual crash must NEVER be reused.
Jon
The thing ditched in estuary water, the term beyond economic repair springs to mind.
Sea water in **Everything** so not just a new wiring loom, new engines, new cabin fittings, new avionics, but latent salt corrosion hidden in rivet holes and behind structure, nope, once you decide to ditch in water the aircraft is your insurers problem!
Regards, Dan.
This plane actually CRASHED! Although there wasn't MAJOR structural damage, there was quite a bit of damage. It hit hard on pretty thick ice.
That's BEFORE the water got into everything. There's some sort of unofficial FAA rule that parts off any actual crash must NEVER be reused.
Jon
I doubt a rule that simple exists — some planes crash but are salvageable. Ergo, lots of parts (everything that wasn’t replaced) is a part “off [an] actual crash”.
Given how regulated aircraft parts are, I assume there are very real, and very specific, official FAA regulations regarding salvage parts.
Yeah, I literally can’t think of a single component that could be safely reused after a ditching in salty or brackish water.
Windows, interior panels, tires, stainless and titanium fittings, light covers, trim parts and access panels, probably lots of stuff could be safely reused. Given the requirements necessary to certify parts as airworthy though it's probably not worth trying to reuse most stuff.
Certainly it made sense to write off the plane, even without the saltwater there is likely all kinds of hidden structural damage. Water may look soft but hitting it at that speed is a lot like hitting dirt, there's going to be all kinds of buckling and over-stressed parts. I sure wouldn't want to ride on that plane again even if somebody did patch up the visible damage and put new engines on it. If it didn't go to a museum it would have been unceremoniously shredded for scrap.
It is a well-known fact that no aircraft is allowed to fly until the weight of its associated paperwork exceeds its own weight. After absorbing so much water, the aircraft is now much heavier, and it is not cost-effective to increase the weight of the paperwork to compensate!
Simple solution is to dump the paperwork in the river and let it absorb ...
They put a $100M plane in a museum..... was it beyond repair or did the insurance pay out ?
That's not a hundred million dollar aircraft. It's a tiny fraction of that. You have to understand that even minor damage can lead to a long winded and costly process to ensure the airworthiness of every component involved. This thing crashed in a fairly major way. It's inevitably going to be more expensive to take apart an aircraft and build it all up again than to simply build it in the first place.
Aircraft parts aren't just expensive because they're expensive to simply make. They're expensive because of all of the testing, paperwork and sacrificing of slightly fondled virgins involved that makes it so expensive.
There's some sort of unofficial FAA rule that parts off any actual crash must NEVER be reused.
Go up to Alaska. You'd be hard pressed to find a SuperCub or 195 flying up there that
hasn't been rebuilt from crashed parts...
Planes are returned to service after crash repairs regularly. I've bought parts off wrecks before to keep other planes flying. It's a pretty common thing.
Go up to Alaska. You'd be hard pressed to find a SuperCub or 195 flying up there that hasn't been rebuilt from crashed parts...
Planes are returned to service after crash repairs regularly. I've bought parts off wrecks before to keep other planes flying. It's a pretty common thing.
That might be the reason why small aircraft tend to be statistically quite dangerous and large commercial aircraft are a very safe place to be. They're held to different standards for obvious reasons and the effect is significant.
The standards are not all that different. Small aircraft are often flown by people who are not professional pilots, and they are smaller, simpler, more vulnerable machines. Any parts going into small aircraft need the same sort of paper trail as parts going into an airliner.
I had a service call once and was talking to the customer who was a machinist. He said if an airline needed a handful of bolts they would actually send a representative to watch him make the bolts.
I'm a bit late, but my high school social studies teacher wanted to buy that plane when it was up for sale, and mount it on top of the school, to use as a classroom during the school year and a museum during the summer. Unfortunately nobody donated toward buying it.
I heard they were going to turn it into a water slide at Disney World
I had a service call once and was talking to the customer who was a machinist. He said if an airline needed a handful of bolts they would actually send a representative to watch him make the bolts.
It's called 'source inspection' for a reason. Anybody who has ever worked in a small machine shop has run into them on pretty much every government contract.
I'm a bit late, but my high school social studies teacher wanted to buy that plane when it was up for sale, and mount it on top of the school, to use as a classroom during the school year and a museum during the summer. Unfortunately nobody donated toward buying it.
Recycling old airplanes into buildings is nothing new.
https://www.airplanehome.com/
It's in the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in New York
That is why there are so many scrapped aircraft in graveyards, taken there, and stripped for parts over time, to repair other aircraft. Most are there because major service is due, and the cost of the 3 to 4 year long process is very high, often multiple times the actual value of the aircraft second hand, so they are flown there, parked and as parts are needed they are taken off, checked and recertified and then sold.
When you are down to pretty much only a fuselage and a lot of broomsticks and planks acting as placeholders for things like floors and panels they typically then bring over the tracked crawler with the large hydraulic shears on it and cut the remains into smaller parts, that can fit into a container, to go for smelting into new metal. Most of the 747's still flying are only doing so because there are still donors in graveyards that provide the needed certified parts. Interestingly the most expensive part and the most in demand, aside from engines and landing gear, are the original coffee machines, as they are no longer made in that exact model. Instrumentation there have been so many revisions made that often a plane in the yard will still have all the original instrumentation in there when it is nearly gutted if it is an early model. Upgraded avionics are however a very fast seller, often going out complete to upgrade another aircraft instead. Seats are also a fast mover, basically every part in the cabin is.
I would have thought instrumentation would be a popular item on the surplus market. Certainly the guys building flight simulators and aviation enthusiasts wanting conversation pieces and shelf ornaments are into that stuff.