Sunday, October 25, 2026

Engine Out Drill


We've seen from among these posts how there have been steam locomotives which served a century with what was once British Railways, and how the venerable B-52 bomber is closing on that tenure with an alloy frame in place of steel. Now however in a world devoted to preserving the planet as best we can, we're scrapping airliners faster than you'd trade your car.

The explosion of civil aviation that I myself was a part of over in China is combined in a perfect storm with a lack of shop-floor technicians to produce a shortage of jet engines worldwide. It in turn means that new aircraft rolled off the production line might not go into service, but be flown to where its engines can be removed so as to be fitted to another to keep it flying.

On the other hand, when airlines go bust airframes as little as a few years old that ironically bear the name 'Neo' are knocked down for maybe five million dollars once shorn of their motive power: at which rate we'll all be able to afford glamping pods from fuselages.

Aluminium is known as the energy metal for the electrical energy required to smelt it, and in the way carbon emitted by making an EV outweighs that ever likely to be emitted by your banger ~ carbon stemming from a cycle of 'make-it-and-break-it' likely outweighs the ecological benefit from those more efficient engines.

It's a mad mad mad mad world... but love it while it lasts.

Watch petrol-heads on YouTube and you'll soon learn how green tick-boxes require more power from smaller auto-engines than ever, in turn making them decidedly life-limited, prone to failure and difficult to maintain ~ a situation replicated in the newest generation of geared and super-sized jet engines that are subject to more recalls than ever.