People who are behind on their car payments aren’t the only folks who might see the repo man, they also come for leased aircraft after the carrier has gone out of business. The sudden demise of Spirit Airlines left aircraft scattered around the country after completing their final flights, reports the Wall Street Journal. It was up to Nomadic Aviation Group to retrieve these aircraft and bring them somewhere to be stored.
Like many airlines, Spirit leased its aircraft rather than purchasing them directly. Spirit already tried to turn in half its fleet as it declared bankruptcy for the second time last year, and lessors were watching closely as the airline spiraled toward liquidation. While the shutdown wasn’t unexpected, the speed at which it took place was. Spirit’s Airbus fleet was left wherever its last flights just happened to land. Some were even abandoned at the gates where passengers disembarked and found themselves stranded mid-trip. This blocked the gates from further use, but there were no longer any Spirit employees to move them out of the way.
That’s where Nomadic comes in. They work on behalf of the leasing companies to retrieve these aircraft where they were left, ensure they’re still airworthy, and fly them to a storage facility. They’d also been monitoring the Spirit situation for some time, apparently, but how sudden the shutdown was came as a surprise to them, too. “I had six hours to find 20 pilots,” co-founder Bob Allen told the Wall Street Journal. Many of the pilots he found for these unusual ferry flights used to fly for Spirit Airlines.
Not your average repo
Repossessing an airliner is a bit more complicated than pulling up with a truck, latching on, and towing it away. Airports aren’t going to just hand a multi-million dollar aircraft over to someone other than the airline that normally operates it. Once the legal hurdles are cleared, Nomadic still has to fuel the aircraft, file flight plans, and move flight crews into place, just like a regular airline. A licensed mechanic and an FAA representative have to check each aircraft to ensure it is safe and airworthy before taking flight. The longer a plane sits, the more maintenance and inspection it needs before it can get back into the air, and so it’s in Nomadic’s best interest to move as quickly as possible to minimize how much work is needed before it can fly again.
Then there’s the question of where all these aircraft are going to go until the powers that be determine their fate. The answer is actually rather simple: two desert facilities just outside Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona, selected for the same reason that Davis-Monthan Air Force Base — known as the Boneyard – is in the Tucson area. From Fox 10 Phoenix:
“The reason we take them out here to Arizona is No. 1, Arizona is a dry climate,” Allen said. “So airplanes that sit in wet climates, they start to deteriorate. They start developing [corrosion]. This is a very difficult situation for not only Spirit and its airlines and it’s employees, but also for the leasing industry. So they’re trusting us to do this as efficiently as possible.”
Many of Spirit’s former fleet will be leased out to other airlines, including Spirit’s competitors. Some older planes may be scrapped for their engines. Due to a Pratt & Whitney production shortage, this could put newer planes waiting for engines back in the air. Ultimately, the fate of Spirit’s zombie fleet depends on what the leasing companies that own it decide to do.
