It’s inevitable. As air travel has expanded, airlines have proliferated and the number of planes in our skies has grown exponentially. Slowly but surely a jumbo-sized recycling problem is being created.

But perhaps because of their long lifespan – 25 to 30 years – and their small number compared to cars (Airbus estimates that under 50 of its aircraft reach end of life each year), the question of what to do with unwanted jumbo jets has not really vexed the minds of EU policy makers. There is no equivalent to the End-of-Life Vehicle Directive covering aircraft. Instead, and perhaps anticipating producer responsibility legislation, individual manufacturers have come up with their own schemes to deal with planes that reach the end of the road (er, runway).

Boeing set up the Aircraft Fleet Recycling Association (AFRA), an umbrella recycling company with bases in Arizona and France. Meanwhile, in 2003 Airbus launched a part EU-funded programme called Process for Advanced Management of End-of-Life Aircraft (PAMELA). The idea was to investigate how the industry could better recycle and recover its end-of-life planes. PAMELA has now moved onto its industrialised phase, Tarbes Advanced Recycling and Aircraft Maintenance Company (TARMAC), a joint venture with SITA that in April 2009 saw the opening of a specialised dismantling and decommissioning plant in Tarbes in south west France.

Here in the UK, the industry is affected by the Environmental Permitting Regulations of 2010. According to the Environment Agency (EA), end-of-life aircraft fall under the definition of waste and anyone who wishes to dismantle a plane is required to obtain a permit from the EA. There are no exemptions. However, the sheer amount of different components the average plane contains means that they are also covered by a number of existing EU directives. “WEEE... RoHS... regulations concerning pyrotechnic components – all of the regulations applying to industrial artefacts – apply to an aircraft”, says Olivier Malavallon, Airbus PAMELA Project Manager. “An aircraft is not one unique weight, it is a sum of different weights and we have to comply with all the regulations that cover these.”

Larger airlines like British Airways and Virgin own their own aircraft and before the planes reach end of life, the companies will have usually sold them onto smaller carriers. Many other airlines simply lease their planes. These are returned to the leasing company which eventually usually sells them onto a parts company. It is they that then turn to specialised dismantlers, of which there are two in the UK, the larger being Gloucestershire-based Air Salvage International (ASI).

Managing Director Mark Gregory estimates that since ASI opened in 1994, over 350 aircraft have passed through its doors. That might not seem a lot, but as he explains, breaking down a passenger jet is a time-consuming and laborious business. “An older plane could take between four and six weeks, a next-generation aircraft more. A 400 series 747 would probably take us 12 weeks. We’d take out over 1,500 items.

“If a plane has come in from a leasing company, they will try and sell it as a flyer. If not, it’ll end up going down the route of dismantling. Quite often, airlines pay us to get rid of planes. They do that because there’s no residual value left. They can’t get the parts reused. It’ll be something like a BAC111, a very old ’60s-type aircraft which is now defunct. But that only happens now and again. I’d say only five per cent are like that.”

The dismantling starts by taking out the engine, which comprises about 70 per cent of the plane’s value. The removal has to be done in accordance with guidelines set down by the Civil Aviation Authority – i.e. it has to be done by a supervised team, in conformity with its aircraft maintenance manual. Gregory estimates that nearly all of the engines that ASI removes are reused. “It’s very rare that we scrap an engine, although it really depends on the status of the aircraft and whether you’re allowed to do it anyway. With most aircraft we handle, their engines are removed within two or three days of coming in. They’re tagged as serviceable and they go on to be fitted onto other aircraft.” The engines that are not serviceable have items such as the generator and hydraulic pump taken out and will either go back to the manufacturer or be sold for scrap to parts companies.

After the engine is removed, next to go are the fuel, any hazardous liquids, the avionics and other high-value items. “Once we get to a stage where all the useful parts have been removed, we’re left with an airframe sat on its landing gear. We then truss the airframe, remove the landing gear and dispose of the aircraft. Disposal could take half a day to two days depending on the size of the aircraft.”