The new Boeing 747-8, which flew only 30 hours in 16 flights and was intended for the Saudi crown prince, has been sent for disposal. The reason is tragic – the customer died suddenly.
According to the Mirror, the VIP airliner has been parked on the ground for almost 10 years at the Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg Euroairport, which is located on the border between the three countries of France, Switzerland, and Germany. There, the aircraft was to be equipped with a luxurious interior. However, this never happened, and they could not find a new buyer for the plane. In the end, the exclusive vehicle was delivered to Pinal Airport in Arizona (USA), a junkyard where decommissioned aircraft are disassembled and stored indefinitely. The publication also drew attention to the fact that the fate of this ship, the creation of which would require a massive amount of resources, emphasizes the wasteful nature of the existence of private aviation.
The scrapped plane was a Boeing Business Jet (BBJ), a modified version of the company’s jetliners designed for government and corporate customers. Its flight range is slightly more than 16,000 km, and the cabin area is about 460 square meters, more than any similar aircraft of this size.
Connor Diver, a senior analyst at aviation analytics company Cirium, said the BBJ version of the 747-8 was hardly a big success. “A total of ten were built, and this is the first to be decommissioned. It’s not clear who exactly buys them, but it’s a very, very large private jet, and the only operators or buyers tend to be governments and royal families,” he said.
For example, this particular plane was intended for Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdel Aziz Al Saud, who died in 2011, just months before the jet was scheduled to be delivered. The plane was put up for sale for $95 million, but a buyer was never found.
Part of the problem regarding the sale was the high cost of its equipment, which could amount to an amount equivalent to half of UAH 2 billion. Boeing was said to have bought the plane back in 2022, before it was delivered to Arizona on April 15, 2022.
The chairman of one company recently told the Mirror how they found a new purpose for charter planes – to transport pets safely. K9 Jets is a newly established company that specializes in transporting animals and their owners from the UK to various destinations including the US East Coast, Paris, and Lisbon. Owners and their pets will board a luxury Gulfstream aircraft that seats up to ten passengers with their pets. The price of tickets starts from UAH 380,000, which includes a seat for one person and their pet, as well as a fee for a private terminal, luggage, and all taxes.