Scrap and Aircraft

[Karl]

I have learned that if an aircraft is 15 years old and in bad shape it can be scrapped. 

I have an owned aircraft that is 15+ years old and needs a D check.  I has been for sale for about a year.
It is a type of which plenty of better are available for lease or sale on the used market.
For some reason it is still listed at 85%!

When will I be able to scrap it?

Will some type of button appear at some point for me to clink "scrap"?

[dmoose42]

yes a button will appear on planes allowing you to scrap them.  It may not have appeared for you if the plane is for sale.  Try taking it off the market and see if it appears.  Honestly, you may be better off listing it at a lower price first, as I believe you get 33% of the value of the aircraft back when you scrap it.

[Karl]

Try taking it off the market and see if it appears. 

Thanks.  I took it off the market, and the "scrap" button did appear.

I did scrap it since I was selling it for just a little more than I got for scrap metal.
I only habe one more like it in the fleet, and I want to get rid of it.

[Troxartas86]

Some folks (me in JA 7 anyway) will actually buy your 15 year old plane and even D-check it if your list price is insanely low. I have grabbed a bunch of Caravelles this way at well below their actual value. Of course when you want cash now, scrapping may still be the best option. I did a lot of scrapping at the 15yr mark with my E120/PC12 operation in MT7 even though there was a demand for the 120s.

[Karl]

Some folks (me in JA 7 anyway) will actually buy your 15 year old plane and even D-check it if your list price is insanely low.

I currently have only 1 F27-200 left in the fleet.

There are a lot on the used market for sale and for lease.

Since I have a small "commuter" style airline, every penny counts.  As the planes get older the cost of the checks increases. 

Some newer aircraft are available, so I get them.  Unfortunately, there seems to be some difficulty in the availability of good commuter aircraft.  While there are plenty of used 707s still available, and some really old mid-long range aircraft are still available (even new), commuter aircraft do not seem to stay in production very long.

[Troxartas86]

When you are running a regional, it's a good idea to coordinate with other regionals or even make friends with a large wealthy airline and work with them to keep your production lines open. Some people with a lot of disposable income will be willing to order a few planes for you if you make good on your promise to buy/lease them quickly. As a player known for flying unusual aircraft, I can tell you it's extremely difficult to keep a line open by yourself unless you have a large enough operation to make orders whenever necessary. I'm amazed at how many LET L-410s I was able to build in DoTM without any help as a tiny barely profitable African regional. Typically I lose my private production lines around 20 aircraft or so if I'm lucky.

[brique]

Keeping lines open is a major headache, even for popular types like the E120's, its an annual freak-out trying to scrape together orders in time. Main issue is that it often requires 5-10 planes being ordered to change the bean-counters minds and does also mean you have plan your future expansion with that in mind. Just another aspect of regional scale operations you have to deal with.

[thedr2]

I think that perhaps something in the formula that keeps the production lines open needs to be altered.
For instance the smaller aircraft ( <20 seats) aren't ordered very often because few airlines can support them, but in real life they would be regularly ordered by the small operators not seen in AWS (i.e. Air taxi, light freight or private owners) and could stay open for decades. Same goes for Russian aircraft, to a slightly lesser extent.
I don't think that just because players aren't ordering a certain aircraft in vast numbers, means that we should stop them being ordered altogether.

Perhaps the thing to do would be to reduce the production rate of these aircraft, and then close the line after a few years if orders have still been slow.

EDIT: Another option maybe to allow players to express an interest in ordering aircraft from a manufacturer without committing. If the manufacturer receives enough interest, then it may keep the line open a little longer. This would be reflective of the real world.

[esquireflyer]

When you are running a regional, it's a good idea to coordinate with other regionals or even make friends with a large wealthy airline and work with them to keep your production lines open. Some people with a lot of disposable income will be willing to order a few planes for you if you make good on your promise to buy/lease them quickly. As a player known for flying unusual aircraft, I can tell you it's extremely difficult to keep a line open by yourself unless you have a large enough operation to make orders whenever necessary. I'm amazed at how many LET L-410s I was able to build in DoTM without any help as a tiny barely profitable African regional. Typically I lose my private production lines around 20 aircraft or so if I'm lucky.

In JA7 I've placed enough Concorde and Tu-144 orders to keep both lines open through End of Time. Other airlines also bandwagon-ordered, but I think most of them are just using the orders for tax evasion purposes.

Karl if you need to save a production lines in JA7 I can buy some planes from that type.

[Karl]

Karl if you need to save a production lines in JA7 I can buy some planes from that type.

Thanks, but I am doing OK.

I decided to reduce my reliance on a type and am replacing it with a newer but smaller type that I can use to serve small airports several times per day instead of just once per day.  So far, they are doing so profitably.

[knobbygb]

Another thing that would help keep lines open would be to allow us to spread the orders out more - again something more akin to real life.

I was trying to keep a line open and I could only afford 10 planes so I asked for 40 and then set 3 out of every 4 to "Skip/Do not order".  I thought this would spread out my ppoduction slots but a few days later, all the orders were 'shuffled' back to immediate delivery!  Never mind.  If we could do that and the orders would stay spread out it would help.  Rather like the other posted suggested - kind of slowing down the production line.  I guess in the real world if I asked boeing for one plane every 3 months they do that for me. Just a thought.