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Teruel Airport in Spain is a new addition to Tarmac Aerosave and can store an additional 250 aircraft. Over 900 airports worldwide were required for storage during the lockdowns.
The travel industry is basically on hold during lockdown but the cost to the industry is not just the lost business but the ongoing costs that never stop. Think about what happens to the hundreds of cruise ships and thousands of aeroplanes as they have to go somewhere.
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Tarmac Aerosave celebrating their 800th aircraft in storage during 2019 and little did they know what was about to happen.
The cruise ships is a different story to the airlines as they have to stay out of ports due to the extra cost of berthing the boats. Docking a boat is not cheap as the ports offer a limited service at a premium price.
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Babbacombe Bay off Torquay,England where the Cunard line is storing their vessels. They return to port once per month to change crew and replenish supplies.
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This is off the coast of Florida.
The cruise liners have to stay out at sea and depending on where the boat is registered have to have a minimum compliment of crew on board. The average crew compliment right now is 120 per vessel and the cruise companies still have to fly them home after their work period is over swapping out the various crews. Considering this has been happening since March last year that is nearly a year of funding huge costs each month even though they have had no income.
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The airline industry is lucky as they don't have the same sort of issues the cruise liners have. They can fly their planes off into storage as storing planes at the airports is just too costly as they don't own them. Storage at an independent specialist airfield will only set them back in the region of $5000 per month. For this service engines are removed and stored in a safe environment. Airports would charge in the region of $210 000 per month for the same service. Some airports have offered spare runways for storage as they see it as lost revenue like Zurich has for the Swiss Air fleet and Frankfurt for Lufthansa, but still they have to find other airports as that is not adequate as space is limited.
The problem is space however as where do you find storage facilities for 19 000 commercial planes? Not only finding the space but they need to be in regions with low dust and dry conditions. Spain has managed to offer up old Nato airfield bases and a few clever investors have bought abandoned airfields.
The airlines in Europe rely heavily on a company called Tarmac Aerosave which is owned by Airbus. This company is a specialist storage company for the airlines plus they are servicing and engine specialists who also can scrap and salvage planes.
The Covid pandemic is the first time in history that a majority of airlines have had to park off their fleet. The only other time anything similar has happened was directly after 9/11 and when the Boeing 777 max was grounded due to faults found.
Tarmac Aerosave has had to expand their storage facilities as the world has over 900 airports storing more than 19 000 aeroplanes. This has never been seen before plus part of the service is offering a quick turnaround as and when planes are required.
The airlines are reportedly hemorrhaging $1.8 billion per day in lost revenue so retiring planes that are no longer required due to a change in business model is now being carried out. The A380's plus many Boeing 747's have gone for good in favor of more economical twin engine aircraft.
I find this sort of stuff fascinating how industries have to change in order to survive. No airline or cruise liner could ever imagine that they would be parking off for nearly a year and who knows how long this is going to be and how much this whole thing will end up costing.