Two Boeing 787-8 Dreamliners are to be dismantled and scavenged for spare parts after they were retired from commercial service at just 10 years old. This is the first time that a 787 Dreamliner has ever been dismantled for spare parts in order to service the so-called ‘used serviceable material’ market.
The process is being handled by the Irish aviation asset management and trading company EirTrade which will start the painstaking process of disassembling the Dreamliners in Prestwick, Scotland.
If all goes to plan, parts from the two aircraft will start to become available from April onwards. The hope is that maintenance costs for Boeing 787 Dreamliners will be driven down as used spare parts begin to become available on the market.
The 787 Dreamliner was first flown commercially in October 2011, but these two aircraft are even younger at just 10 years old. Until now, no Dreamliner has ever been retired from commercial service – typically, modern commercial aircraft will be utilised for at least two decades before being retired.
“With the first B787s approaching the 12-year check, the disassembly of these two B787 aircraft could not come at a better time for operators & maintenance facilities,” commented Ken Fitzgibbon, EirTrade Aviation’s chief executive.
“As no B787s have been retired from commercial service to date, there is almost no USM market for this platform at the moment,” Fitzgibbon continued.
The timeframe to strip each aircraft will take around three months, and the company says it has already received a “huge” amount of interest from airlines and maintenance contractors.
The two 787 Dreamliners set to be stripped for parts are believed to have once belonged to Norwegian Air Shuttle, which were delivered new to the company in 2013. Norwegian grounded its 787 fleet at the start of the pandemic before deciding to exit the long-haul market altogether.
Norse Atlantic, which operates a similar business model to Norwegian, agreed to lease Norwegian’s fleet of 787-9 aircraft, but the -8 variant was left to languish at Glasgow Prestwick Airport.
Rather than attempting to move the two aircraft to their specialist facility in Knock, EirTrade will attempt to dismantle the aircraft in situ in Scotland.
