Luxury Boeing 747 Scrapped After Just 16 Flights

It sat abandoned for almost a decade.

Short Life

A practically new Boeing 747 passenger jet, which was meant to be heavily modified to fly wealthy Saudi royalty around the world, has been scrapped after spending only 30 hours and 16 flights in the air, CNN reports — a wasteful demise for a plane that usually has a lifespan of 25 to 30 years.

The jet, which sat abandoned at an airport near Basel, Switzerland, for almost a decade, was never actually modified with a luxury interior — and has now been flown to be scrapped at an airport in Arizona instead.

That's because its intended customer, Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, died in 2011, months before it was meant to be delivered.

End of an Era

The news comes after the very last 747 to have ever been built by Boeing was shipped to cargo operator Atlas Air back in January, marking the end of the jumbo jet that ushered in a new era of air travel more than half a century ago.

As for the abandoned Saudi 747, it will likely never be used as a luxury jet for the ultra-wealthy.

"No one apart from a Saudi head of state is going to want a private, four-engine business jet," Richard Aboulafia, an aviation analyst at AeroDynamic Advisory, told CNN.

Connor Diver, a senior analyst at aviation analytics firm Cirium, added that the renovations would likely "cost 30, 40 maybe 50 million dollars."

It's a sad ending for a luxury jet that was never meant to be.

"I’ve seen pictures of it and it’s been dismantled already, the engines have already been removed," Diver told CNN. "They were effectively brand new, and one of them is probably in the region of $20 million, so four would be in the region of $80 million."

READ MORE: Brand new Boeing 747 scrapped after 16 flights [CNN]

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