Posted on by Mark Evans

Aircraft storage prior to delivery

Due to various market conditions, there are an increasing number of new build aircraft being moved from their final assembly facility to various storage locations prior to customer delivery. This is occurring while the aircraft still has a status of ‘on-order’.

Fleets Analyzer includes an event that makes it easy to identify these aircraft, i.e. “Ferried to Storage Prior To Delivery”. Until recently it was not possible to see the storage location for aircraft that had a status of ‘on-order’, this has now been changed, and it’s now possible to see where these aircraft have been stored. You can see an example for Air China’s on-order 737 MAX fleet below in Figure 1. While on the Aircraft Detail tab, simply add the ‘Storage/Conversion Location’ optional column.

Air China's 737 MAX storage locations for aircraft that have yet to be delivered
Figure1: Air China’s 737 MAX storage locations for aircraft that have yet to be delivered.

If we move from the Aircraft Detail tab to the Aircraft Events Detail tab, remove Air China as the operator, and add ‘New Storage/Conversion Location’ column, then we can view the on-order 737 MAX ferried events, along with the date, and the storage location. This is shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2. Viewing as events on the Aircraft Events Detail tab.
Figure 2. Viewing as events on the Aircraft Events Detail tab.

If you then move to the Aircraft Events Summary tab, and group by ‘New Storage/Conversion Location’, then you can see a useful summary of the global distribution of storage locations for the on-order MAX fleet. See Figure 3 below.

Figure 3. The global distribution of the on-order MAX fleet.
Figure 3. The global distribution of the on-order MAX fleet.