Now 19 years old … relatively young by most aviation standards … Air New Zealand’s first Boeing 747-400, ZK-NBS and named The Bay of Islands… is about to get airborne one last time as it flys out of the Land of the Long White Cloud… and heads off overseas to be dis-assembled for parts.
An estimated $5 million was all it will probably return to Air New Zealand.
Air New Zealand’s fleet of 8 747-400 aircraft are scheduled to be replaced by 5 Boeing 777-300ER by the end of 2010.
By: Gary Cain - 3rd June 2009 at 00:33
That’s a shame. I’ve flown on her four or five times.
By: Homer09001 - 3rd June 2009 at 00:01
Wow only $5M i though my 206 depreciated quickly, its lost over £3k in 3 years.
By: Newforest - 2nd June 2009 at 15:20
This was the biofuel experimental plane.;)
By: symon - 2nd June 2009 at 15:02
The Air NZ long haul fleet do rack up a fair bit on each sector, often 12-13 hours at a time. Factoring the frequency of these trips and the length of time the aircraft have been operating these for…..it all adds up. However in these circumstances I think cost is the issue, not aircraft age/cycle/hours. Cheaper scrapping it than operating it at a loss/long term storage.
By: J Boyle - 2nd June 2009 at 14:53
How many hours on it?
I remember as a kid, there was a great deal written on a North Central DC-3 that had 87,000 hours…people thought that record would never be broken.
When I last went to the UK from Seattle, my BA 747-400 arrived, was serviced and went back the same day. Nineteen years of a schedule like that adds up.
For years, Braniff flew their (only) 747-200 daily between Dallas and Hawaii and back.
I think that broke the record and ended up as the high time 747 and perhaps aircraft.
It was scrapped by Tower Air at JFK years ago.
Pity it couldn’t have been preserved.
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June 2, 2009 at 7:40 am