Victorville Report: Airbus Down, Part IV - The Movie

For the last post in this series, here's a six-minute video of the "smashing" good time that was had in Victorville on Friday. (Watching this, I'm vividly reminded of what it must have looked like to watch a T-Rex feed on some dead prey....)

Victorville Report: Airbus Down, Part III

Doug Scroggins sent in this composite of the continuing process of scrapping ex-American Airbus A300 N7055A.

On Friday, Doug and the ARC hosted me and aviation writer/photographer Nick Veronico to witness first hand how an Airbus get smashed. Excavator operator Ray here peels back the roof...what was once carefully maintained aircraft structure flops like foil.

I've seen many aircraft "crunched", but after watching for a while, I realized what was different about this aircraft...it was almost as shiny as the day it was new, and that lent an air of unbelievability to the whole scene.

Victorville Report: Airbus Down, Part II

Photos by Doug Scroggins

The de-construction at Victorville of ex-American Airlines Airbus A300 N7055A by Aircraft Recycling Corp. continues in this series of images from Doug. The cockpit will be saved for display purposes, and will eventually be trailered to Mojave.

Please welcome...Doug Scroggins

Mojave Skies would like to welcome our new Victorville correspondent, Doug Scroggins. Doug has worn many aviation hats over the years, including writer, photographer, video producer, aircraft preserver and aircraft scrapper. 

Doug is a regular contributor to Airliners Magazine, Airliner World, Airways and was the publisher of the now-out-of-print magazine Lost Birds, which featured older air crashes and recoveries. He also was the producer of the Discovery Channel documentary Scrapping Aircraft Giants. 

Currently, he's the manager director / director of operations for Aircraft Recycling Corp, which is based at Southern California Logistics Airport (VCV), and specializes in dismantling and scrapping airliners in an environmentally-friendly manner. During his time there, Doug has supervised the dismantling of American's very first 767s, N301AA, 302, 303 and 304, as well as AA's 767 (N330AA) that caught fire at LAX. He also scrapped the Honeywell 720B, N720H at Phoenix, and the Northwest 747, N627US in Guam. (In the photo at right, Doug poses with the nose art from Gemini Air Cargo's DC-10 Deanie, which he scrapped at Mojave in 2007.)

As ARC scraps some of the more interesting airliners that come their way, Doug has agreed to share their work with us, beginning with the two posts below, photo essays of the jobs that ARC has been working on in the last couple of weeks, an ex-American A-300-600, N7055A and one of the last ex-TWA 767s, N610TW. 

Welcome aboard, Doug!

Victorville Report: Airbus Down

Photo essay by Doug Scroggins.

Victorville Report: Boeing's 767 Project

Aircraft Recycling Corp. of Victorville worked to supply Boeing with parts of an old TWA 767 in this photo essay by ARC's Doug Scroggins.

Delta 757 Drives to Mojave

In the midst of all the other activities last week, Mojave became the home of yet another retired airliner, this time ex-Delta 757 N606DL. What made things interesting, however, is ''how'' it got here. The plane was originally retired to Victorville airport, where it was due to be scrapped, but the fuselage "tube" was purchased for use as a training device, to be staged at Mojave. Aircraft Recycling Corp., which runs the Victorville scrapyard, cut the wings, tail and cockpit off, and then Aviation Warehouse manufactured a set of special wheels. Because of the height of this oversized load, the overpasses along U.S. Highway 58 couldn't be negotiated, and the plane had to be trucked north to Inyokern and then down to Mojave, sending it through Red Rock Canyon, where numerous TV shows and car commercials have been filmed.

Hawaiian Farewell

For the past seven years, Hawaiian Airlines DC-9-50s have been a fixture at Mojave, and now the last one, N420EA, is being scrapped. The plane, c/n 47689, was originally delivered new to Hawaiian in 1975 as N639HA, but spent three years, from 1988 to 1991 flying for Eastern Airlines, before heading back to the Pacific (but keeping the EA registration for a souvenier). The photo on the right was taken on June 13th. The cockpit section has is in the upper left.

This last Hawaiian maiden didn't go without a moment of glory, however. Like a few others before her, she became a TV star for a fleeting moment, along with N603DC. With wings shorn, and a USAir DC-9-30 main cabin door standing in, a bomb was placed in a passenger seat by the producers of the TV show SmashLab to test bomb-proofing techniques, and tearing a nice hole in the side of the fuselage (right).

N420EA enjoying a Mojave sunrise in December, 2002

When all the Maidens were here.

CO 747 Farewell - End of an Era

The end of an era was quietly marked today by the final scrapping of the last of the three Continental Airlines 747s here. For the past 10 years, a trio of retired Continental 747s has languished in Mojave's boneyard, changing hands repeatedly, and appearing in a number of TV shows. N33021 was the first to meet the scrapper's shear back in 2004, N14024 was cut up a few months ago and lastly N17025 has been turned into scrap metal.

Continental's fleet number 025 was a 747-238, serial 20535 and was the 217th 747 to roll off the Boeing assembly line in 1973. She first flew for Qantas as VH-EBF for a dozen years, before finding a home with People's Express, which then merged into the Continental system. When CO phased out their 747s, 025 flew to Mojave for storage.

Left: N17025 enjoying a quiet desert sunset in December, 2003.
Below: All three CO 747s together, with N33021 in the foreground in the early stages of disassembly, again in December 2003.