Originally Posted by
wortelkwadraat
KLM PH-BFC City of Calgary; 141.938 flying hours and 17.271 cycles. Last flight march 12 2018
28.5 years with some substantial volcanic ash damage when 6 months old.
Now stored at Teruel? (some of the KLM 747's stored there were scrapped)
Just shy of 142k hours would definitely put it in the running for high time - that's ~13.6 hours/day, every day, for 28.5 years.
Part of me thinks it would be somehow fitting that the high time aircraft would be the 747-400 that was nearly lost in a volcanic ash encounter when new.
Perhaps, someday, the high time aircraft will be one of those new-fangled carbon fiber 787s or A350s - carbon fiber doesn't fatigue the way aluminum does. But it'll be a couple decades before that can possibly happen.