Boeing scrapes abandoned aircraft as Uganda Airlines receives planes bid from them

According to the Independent, Boeing, together with Airbus and Embraer from Brazil, have submitted bids to the airline authorities who were accompanied by officials from the Ministry of Works and Transport and the Uganda Civil Aviation Authority.

The Uganda national carrier is looking to upgrade from the Airbus A330-800neo with a capacity of 257 seats and the Mitsubishi CRJ-900 with a capacity of 76 seats.

In the bid, Airbus is said to have offered two aircraft with capacities between 180 and 220, A321-LR and A321-XLR.

Boeing is said to have offered the B737 Max family. The Max-7 has a capacity of 172 seats and the Max-8 has a capacity of 220 passengers.

Boeing 747 glass ceiling

According to CNN, Boeing is scrapping the Boeing 747 private VIP jet after 30 hours in service with a track record of 16 flights.

The aircraft in review was originally made for a Saudi royal Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, but he died in 2011, months before the scheduled delivery. It has been collecting dust in EuroAirport Basel Mulhouse Freiburg for the past 10 years.

However, this make has faced many challenges and seems to have met a small market. The other BBJ "Boeing Business Jet" 747s are currently being used by the governments of Egypt, Kuwait, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, and Turkey, according to Connor Diver, a senior analyst at aviation analytics firm Cirium.

The BBJ 747s have met limited commercial success with the last being sold to cargo operator Atlas Air early this year. Two of the 747-8 variants are currently being transformed into Air Force One planes.

In total, Boeing has sold 250 BBJs, and the 737s, which they have bid to Uganda, made up most of that commercial success.

Moreover, the 747 commercial passenger variant was not popular among airlines.

“Although you might think it’s a brand new aircraft, the alternate uses for it are rather limited. The commercial passenger variant had limited production and very few airlines operated it, and they would not be interested in taking any more. So the only other option was potentially another government, but obviously, that didn’t happen," says Diver.

“Total production of the 747-8 is about 150 aircraft. It’s a small group of users and a small number of aircraft. But on the other hand, they’re going to want to keep those going. I suspect a lot of the components will probably go to the cargo folks," he adds.

The aircraft in review has been taken to Pinal Airpark in Arizona where retired planes are stripped for parts or kept indefinitely.

“What can happen in these cases is that it will sit there until a certain part is needed. They might not necessarily take it all the way down to scrap, and leave it for a few years until somebody wants a specific part,” says Diver.