LONDON: Up to 1,000 aircraft are to be scrapped as a result of the slump in the airline industry after last year”s terrorist attacks on the US.

Airlines cut capacity drastically after last September”s attacks saw air travel fall by up to 50 per cent in some areas. Most carriers flew their surplus jets to special “plane parks” in the US desert, like the one at a former air force base in Victorville, California, where they are better preserved in the hot, dry air, in the hope they will fly again, even if only in the second-hand market.

Experts at US planemaker Boeing estimate there are about 2,000 jets in these “aircraft graveyards” — most planes never actually return.

Randy Baseler, Boeing”s vice-president of marketing, said this was a record and twice the number that were parked in the desert in the early Nineties after the Gulf War — partly because more jumbos, TriStars, DC-10s and 737s have been retired after flying for more than 30 years. He forecast that 1,000 jets would never re-enter service.

European air traffic recovered last month to pre-September levels, six months earlier than Boeing predicted. Transatlantic traffic is still 10 per cent down.—Dawn/The Observer News Service.