First 747-400 heads for scrapyard

Air New Zealand’s first Boeing 747-400 will soon make one final flight to a wrecker’s yard as further capacity cuts loom in the face of a continued fall in demand for global air travel.

The 19-year-old jumbo, named The Bay of Islands, was grounded and put up for sale after completing Air New Zealand’s historic biofuel test flight in December.

Update

Air New Zealand kept flying 747-400s for another five years after this post. Its last 747 revenue service landed at Auckland on 12 September 2014, arriving from San Francisco, and the airline replaced the type with 777s and 787s.

What happened to this aircraft was not unusual. The 747-400 fleet worldwide was retired from passenger flying far faster than anyone expected in 2009, pushed out by twin-engined aircraft that flew the same routes on half the engines. Many airframes went to scrappers; the soundest were converted into freighters, which is how a good number of 747-400s are still working today.

The Bay of Islands had made Air New Zealand’s biofuel test flight in December 2008 shortly before being grounded — an unusually distinguished last assignment for an aircraft on its way out.