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being one of the first 200 to sign up at brilliant.org/HAI. Welcome to beautiful, sunny Victorville, California. Now, Victorville really is an amazing place. It’s tough, but if were to try to really
encapsulate its essence in a single sentence I would tell you that it’s, “a city located
in the Victor Valley of southwestern San Bernardino County, California.” Now, I know you’re probably rearing to go
after that, but before you book your tickets, I’ve just got to tell you that, unfortunately,
they don’t actually have an airport. Well, they do, but it just doesn’t have
passenger flights. It’s a strange airport, you see—one where
plenty of planes fly in, but far fewer fly out. For example, you see these guys? These are 15 Boeing 747 aircraft that flew
into Victorville years ago, plus two other disgusting non-747 aircraft. At their original list price, these 15 here
are worth more than $3.5 billion. With that kind of money, you could could buy
almost half a Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, the entirety of Hong Kong Disneyland, or more
than three Boeing 747’s. So, the question is, why did British Airways,
Air New Zealand, Qantas, and others fly 15 perfectly good aircraft into the middle of
the Mojave desert and leave them there. Oh, and, there are also a couple of other
planes here. Why do airlines leave billions upon billions
of dollars of aircraft deserted in a desert? The answer has to do with capitalism juice—also
known as fuel. For airlines, fuel efficiency essentially
just means “money efficiency.” That’s because fuel is airlines biggest
single cost and so they’ll do just about anything to reduce their fuel consumption. As it turns out, that includes sending perfectly
good aircraft to the desert. For example, a lot of the aircraft here in
Victorville are British Airways 747's which, per passenger, use about a gallon of fuel
per 70 miles flown. Meanwhile, the 777-9s that are replacing BA’s
747’s burn at about 97 miles per gallon per passenger. Therefore, at least on paper, replacing the
747’s will reduce fuel costs by almost 30%. In the short term, that leaves more fuel for
Delta to dump on children, and then, in the long term, this saves BA money even if it
requires spending hundreds of millions of dollars on each new aircraft. That’s a big reason why airlines retire
perfectly good aircraft—because newer models are far more fuel efficient. But why does BA fly their aircraft all the
way across the Atlantic to retire them here, in Victorville, California? Is it because they have over 50 Mexican restaurants,
year-round sunny weather, and ample social activities for older residents? Probably partially, although there’s really
no way to know for sure, but it’s also because Victorville is in the Mojave desert. In fact, almost all aircraft boneyards are
in deserts as placing them there gives two advantages. First, desert soil is typically flat and strong
so aircraft can sit on it with no need to pave the ground. Additionally, the desert air is dry which
reduces corrosion in the metal elements of the aircraft. Although, why do they care about corrosion
if the aircraft are retired? Well, aircraft can always come out of retirement. If an airline is truly done with an aircraft
they can and usually do send it to scrapping. This makes them some money from selling the
parts, but, of course, you can’t un-scrap an aircraft, despite what the appearance of
some United jets would lead to believe. Aircraft are sent to Victorville when airlines
are not truly done with them, even if they’re done flying them. Those British Airways 747’s, for example,
parked here at Victorville, could be used for one of two purposes. First off, considering the aircraft arrived
here perfectly functioning, the airline can use the parts from these aircraft to replace
any faulty parts on the 747’s they have still flying—of which the airline has 32. The other option is that the planes could
be sold to another airline. Just because British Airways doesn’t want
the aircraft doesn’t mean nobody else does. Quite often, old aircraft sitting in boneyards
like Victorville will end up bought by cargo airlines. That’s because FedEx, for example, just
doesn’t care as much about how much fuel they use. It’s not that they’re actively trying
to turn Memphis into a beach destination, even though they’re doing a great job getting
there, it’s just about economics. You see, British Airways, as a passenger airline,
keeps a given aircraft airborne for more than ten hours per day. FedEx, on the other hand, will fly their aircraft
for less than four hours per day. That’s because cargo airlines, focusing
their network on overnight delivery, tend to fly each aircraft from their hub, to their
destination in the early hours of the morning to deliver packages, then leave the aircraft
sitting at the destination all day, then fly it back in the evening to take packages to
be sorted at the hub. Because of that, they spend a smaller proportion
of their time flying and so fuel cost is much less important to cargo airlines in comparison
to passenger airlines. A super-efficient airplane costs FedEx just
as much as BA, but FedEx flies it far fewer hours per day and therefore the increased
efficiency just makes a smaller difference. FedEx will therefore have some ancient aircraft
in its fleet. Its oldest for a while was an MD-10 that started
its life with United Airlines in 1971 and then flew for 49 years before FedEx retired
it last year to, of all places, Victorville. Meanwhile, all the 20 or 30 year-old aircraft
there are waiting for a shot at a second life with FedEx, UPS, or another airline that just
doesn’t care about how much gas they guzzle. Now say you go and retire to a desert. One thing you can do there, no matter if you
have tons of time or none at all, is embrace lifelong learning and acquire new knowledge
with Brilliant. It’s never too early or too late in life
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