Why Are Companies Taking Apart Airplanes That Can Still Fly?
In April 2026, aviation company GA Telesis began taking apart two Airbus A320neos.
There was something unusual about them.
Neither aircraft was even five years old.
These weren't 25-year-old jets at the end of their lives.
They were relatively young airplanes.
Yet instead of keeping them intact, GA Telesis decided to dismantle them and return their components to the aviation aftermarket.
Why would anyone take apart an airplane that can still fly?
The answer is hiding inside the aircraft.
One Airplane Can Become 1,400 Products
To a passenger, an Airbus A320neo is one thing.
An airplane.
But an aviation parts company can see something completely different.
Two engines.
Landing gear.
An auxiliary power unit, or APU.
Nacelles.
Avionics.
Flight-control components.
Wheels and brakes.
Fuel-system components.
Cabin equipment.
And hundreds of other parts.
AerFin, an aviation aftermarket company, says an A320neo teardown can recover approximately:
1,200 to 1,400 serviceable components.
By June 2026, AerFin said it had dismantled eight A320neos and harvested more than:
9,000 high-demand components.
Look at the same transaction another way.
Yesterday:
8 airplanes
Today:
9,000+ components
The airplanes didn't simply disappear.
They became inventory.
Why Take Apart a Young Airplane?
This sounds even stranger when you consider what's happening in aviation.
Airlines need aircraft.
Manufacturers have enormous order backlogs.
Deliveries have faced delays.
So why remove a perfectly useful A320neo from the fleet?
Because an airline doesn't always need another airplane.
Sometimes it needs one part.
Imagine an airline operating 100 A320-family aircraft.
One aircraft develops a problem.
It might need an avionics unit.
An APU component.
Landing-gear equipment.
Or, more seriously, an engine.
Without that part, an aircraft worth tens of millions of dollars can sit on the ground.
So the airline's question may not be:
“Where can we get another airplane?”
It may be:
“Where can we get this part right now?”
That changes the economics.
AerFin says long OEM lead times, high prices and strong aftermarket demand have made strategic teardowns increasingly attractive.
A young aircraft can suddenly become a source of something the market desperately needs:
immediately available parts.
Then There Are the Engines
This is where the economics become extreme.
An A320neo has two engines.
And modern aircraft engines have become extraordinarily valuable assets.
Reuters reported in August 2026 that lease rates for some newer-generation engines had climbed above:
$6,500 per day.
That's for an engine.
Not an airplane.
At $6,500 per day, simple arithmetic gives you:
30 days → about $195,000
365 days → about $2.37 million
Again, this is not $2.37 million of annual profit.
Actual engine leases depend on engine type, condition, remaining life, maintenance requirements, contract terms and many other factors.
But the number illustrates something important.
An available engine can be an extremely valuable asset.
Reuters also reported that engine maintenance expenses at major U.S. airlines rose about 68% between 2019 and 2025.
When engines are scarce, the economics of the entire aircraft can change.
Suddenly, the Owner Has a Different Question
Imagine you own an A320neo.
You have two broad options.
Option A: Keep the airplane intact
Operate it or lease the entire aircraft.
One airplane.
One income-producing asset.
Option B: Part it out
Two engines.
Landing gear.
APU.
Nacelles.
Avionics.
Flight-control components.
Hundreds of other parts.
Each can become a separate asset.
Now the question is no longer:
“Can this airplane still fly?”
The question becomes:
“Which form of this airplane is worth more?”
This is why the aviation industry talks about part-out value.
Companies can evaluate an aircraft not only as one machine, but as a collection of individual assets.
So How Does an Aircraft Teardown Business Make Money?
The basic business model sounds simple.
Buy an aircraft.
Take it apart.
Sell the parts.
But the real economics are much more complicated.
Money can come in from:
Engine sales and leases
Landing gear
APUs
Avionics
Nacelles
Hundreds of smaller components
Exchange programs
And eventually, recyclable materials.
But there is another side.
Money goes out for:
Aircraft acquisition
Ferrying and transportation
Dismantling
Inspection
Maintenance, repair and overhaul
Certification and documentation
Logistics
Warehousing
Preservation
Ongoing maintenance
Insurance
Financing
Inventory write-downs
And parts that may never sell.
So the real equation is closer to this:
Profit = What you recover − everything required to buy, dismantle, prepare, hold and sell the inventory.
And that's where this business becomes much more interesting.
1,400 Parts Does Not Mean 1,400 Sales
Suppose a teardown produces 1,400 usable components.
One component might sell tomorrow.
Another might sell next year.
Another could sit in a warehouse for years.
A component may require an expensive repair before anyone wants it.
Demand for another part may disappear as aircraft fleets change.
Some inventory may eventually have to be scrapped.
So a teardown company isn't only asking:
“Can we recover this part?”
It also has to ask:
Will someone need it?
When will they need it?
How much will they pay?
How much will it cost us to hold it until then?
And most importantly:
“How much can we afford to pay for the airplane in the first place?”
This starts to look less like a scrapyard.
And more like an investment business.
Meet the Companies Doing It
These aren't necessarily small businesses cutting up abandoned airplanes in the desert.
There is an entire aviation aftermarket industry behind them.
GA Telesis, the company dismantling the two sub-five-year-old A320neos, operates across aircraft, engines, components, maintenance and aviation services.
AerFin provides another useful example.
The company reports more than:
$370 million in annual revenue
and approximately:
$169 million in inventory.
It serves more than 600 customers and is an approved supplier to more than 300 airlines.
It has more than 220 employees.
Those numbers reveal something important.
Inventory isn't a side effect of this business.
Inventory is part of the business.
One Public Company's Balance Sheet Makes It Even Clearer
Consider U.S.-listed aviation company AerSale.
AerSale buys, sells and leases aircraft and engines, sells used serviceable material and operates maintenance businesses.
In 2025, the company generated approximately:
$335.3 million in revenue.
At the end of that same year, it reported:
$363.8 million in inventory.
Its inventory included approximately:
$147.7 million — Used Serviceable Material
$118.9 million — Whole aircraft and other whole assets
$76.7 million — MRO and engineered-solutions inventory
$20.4 million — Work in process
In other words:
AerSale ended 2025 holding more inventory than the revenue it generated during the entire year.
That doesn't automatically make the inventory good or bad.
It shows how much capital can be tied up in this business.
And by June 30, 2026, AerSale's inventory had increased further to approximately:
$376.0 million.
But $376 Million of Inventory Is Not $376 Million of Cash
This distinction matters.
An engine sitting in a warehouse may be valuable.
But it isn't cash.
A landing-gear component may be worth money.
But someone still has to buy it.
And while the company waits, inventory has costs.
It needs space.
Some assets need preservation and maintenance.
There can be insurance costs.
Capital can carry financing costs.
Prices can change.
And some parts may never sell for what the company originally expected.
AerSale's filings provide a real example.
During the first half of 2026, the company recorded a:
$1.8 million inventory scrap loss reserve.
It also recorded additional inventory reserves related to estimated net realizable value.
That's the other side of the business.
Parts can be assets.
Parts can also become expensive objects sitting on shelves.
AerSale even notes that its inventory operating cycle can extend beyond one year because of teardown and repair lead times.
So this isn't necessarily:
Buy today → dismantle tomorrow → sell next week.
Capital can remain tied up for a long time.
This Is Really an Inventory Business
That changes how we should think about aircraft teardown.
A company buys one airplane.
Yesterday, its asset might look like this:
A320neo × 1
After teardown:
Engines × 2
Landing gear
APU
Avionics
Nacelles
Hundreds of other components
The company hasn't simply destroyed an asset.
It has transformed one large asset into hundreds or thousands of smaller ones.
Now it has to manage them.
Price them.
Repair them.
Store them.
Move them.
And eventually sell or lease them.
This isn't just a recycling business.
It's an inventory business.
And inventory requires a prediction about the future.
Which aircraft will still be flying five years from now?
Which engines will remain scarce?
Which components will airlines struggle to find?
Which parts will sit untouched in a warehouse?
And what is the maximum price you can pay for an airplane and still make the economics work?
Those are investment questions.
Sometimes the Product Isn't the Part
There is another reason this market exists.
Time.
In aviation, an aircraft unable to fly because of a technical problem can be classified as AOG — Aircraft on Ground.
An expensive aircraft may be sitting idle because it is missing one component.
Flights may be disrupted.
Schedules may have to change.
Another aircraft may have to take its place.
In that situation, the airline doesn't necessarily want the cheapest possible part.
It wants:
the part it can get now.
That means an aftermarket company's product isn't always just an engine, APU or avionics unit.
Sometimes the real product is:
Availability.
Having the right component in the right warehouse at the right moment can have enormous value.
That's why companies build large inventories in different parts of the world.
And the Paperwork Can Be Part of the Product
There is another strange feature of aviation parts.
You can't simply remove a component from an aircraft and bolt it onto another airplane because it looks fine.
Its history matters.
Where did it come from?
How long was it used?
What maintenance has it received?
What repairs were performed?
Is its history traceable?
Does it meet the required airworthiness standards?
Companies such as Boeing also sell used serviceable material, with components inspected and, where necessary, repaired or overhauled before returning to service.
That means two physically identical-looking parts can have very different economic values.
In aviation, paperwork can be part of the product.
A piece of metal isn't enough.
The market needs to trust the history behind it.
One Airplane Can Keep Many Others Flying
Now the strange logic begins to make sense.
Take apart one A320neo.
That particular aircraft may never fly again.
But its engines and hundreds of components can move around the world.
One component may return an aircraft to service in Europe.
Another may go to an airline in Asia.
An engine may keep another aircraft flying while its own engine is being repaired.
So dismantling an airplane doesn't necessarily mean its economic usefulness has ended.
One airplane can be taken apart so many others can keep flying.
That's why describing this simply as “scrapping an airplane” misses most of the business.
BEYOND THE OBVIOUS.
A passenger looks at an A320neo and sees:
One airplane.
An airline sees:
Transportation.
A lessor sees:
A cash-flowing asset.
An aftermarket company may see:
1,200 to 1,400 pieces of potential inventory.
They're all looking at exactly the same machine.
The difference is what they believe its most valuable form might be.
That's why a relatively young airplane can end up being dismantled even when aircraft themselves are in high demand.
The most important question isn't always:
“Can this airplane still fly?”
Sometimes it's:
“In what form is this airplane worth the most?”
The airplane wasn't simply destroyed.
It became inventory.
And sometimes, the most valuable way to use an airplane may be not to fly it at all.
BEYOND THE OBVIOUS.
Sources
GA Telesis — A320neo Disassembly Announcement
GA Telesis announcement concerning the dismantling of two A320neos less than five years old.
AerFin — A320neo Global Inventory Network
Used for AerFin's eight A320neo teardowns and more than 9,000 harvested components.
AerFin — Strategic Teardowns and Supply Constraints
Background on supply constraints and the economics behind strategic aircraft teardowns.
AerFin — Company Overview
Used for company revenue, inventory, customer, airline and employee figures.
AerSale — 2025 Form 10-K, SEC
Used for 2025 revenue and year-end inventory figures.
AerSale — June 2026 Form 10-Q, SEC
Used for June 2026 inventory and inventory-reserve information.
Boeing — Used Serviceable Materials
Background on inspected, repaired and certified used aviation components.