Recycling : Covid-19 causes plummeting of airplane scrap recycling market

Currently, 500 airplanes are dismantled on a yearly basis. By 2030, said number is projected to rise to 2,000 planes a year.

As of now, 85-90% of an aircraft’s weight can be recycled for reuse in aviation or other industries.

In general, planes that get phased out are around 25 years old. Replacements become necessary around this time span due to metal fatigue, which describes the effects of strain and pressure on critical metal components in use within planes.

Yet as a commercial plane gets retired, its individual components remain valuable. The salvaging of parts allows for the excavation of hundreds of thousands of parts such as seats, windshields or landing gear which in turn can be disassembled into their basic components, compromised of critical resources like glass, aluminium or steel.

Under normal circumstances, retired commercial jets are a boost to the used serviceable materials (USM) market, with a relevant party willing to recycle an aircraft for economic gain.

Yet the pandemic changed that dynamic. The collapse of international travel led to the retirement of two-thirds of the world’s airliners, as recorded by aviation data source Circum.

Chris Markou, head of operational cost management at the International Air Transport Organisation (IATA), explained the status quo like this: “The recycling market—aircraft disassembled for parting out and reuse of components—may decrease due to lower demand for spare parts as many airlines operate smaller fleets, therefore they have excess parts inventories in their warehouses before they need to go out to the market to get parts. Excess inventories will be used first before getting into aircraft part-outs.”

Since March 2019, demand for metal scrap sourced from planes has been dropping steadily, with demand for certain engine types having grown virtually non-existent. As some commercial wide-bodied jets that have been grounded due to the pandemic will probably never fly again, their potential parts are automatically rendered useless. The slump in the scrap market may affect small and medium recycling companies should aircraft production not pick up again. Without demand for critical materials, the drive to recycle may stagnate within the aviation industry. Stakeholders predict, however, that the current status quo is liable to change with the total market for recycled airliner parts still set to reach $6 billion by 2022.