Flight Detent...Errr..sorry for butting in...I was just going to say what a great airplane the L1011 is, and has always been.
It's an airplane that was way ahead of its time.
My understanding of the main reason most larger airlines, at least, change their airplanes for later models is not because of higher maintenance costs, or even slightly higher running costs, but its because the airline wants the travelling public to see they're in a shiney new airframe, and the public like that to...not knowing anything else but what they can see, new seats and carpets.
This is not an issue here, and so they can go ahead and use good, reliable (generally) established types, that still have plenty of good hours, and an FE!
(can't overlook that!).
Cheers...FD...
The Wright Flyer was "ahead of its time" and if the ministry could find a way of hanging a couple of thousand pounders on it they would probably still be using them too!
An airline is in the industry to make money.... A lot of the budget airlines have a turn over of fleet every 5 years as once you get out of the 5 year warranty period you can start adding a lot of noughts to your maintainance bills, pure and simple... additionally as mentioned fuel burn is crucial in factoring this in, I realise the RAF is in a world of its own, they proved that when they rebuilt the Tristar that did an autoland at Brize many moons ago with the system not on and did the wing spars.......... no one in their right minds would have put it into a hangar for a year and throw money at it, but the RAF did, I do not even thing the Manufacurer could believe that one...
It's not rocket science to see that if airlines are dumping these things in the desert then they have had there time, the Governments of this Country on the other hand always have worked in quick cheap fixes that plaster over the real problems.
No Government is going to be popular by spending huge amounts of resources and increasing taxation to fund it when they can prop up a failing system with a few cheap off the shelf old dogs whilst looking to be doing something....... Take the landrover for example and the bodge it and scarper jobs they do on them for Iraq, this is plastering over the cracks cheaply to make it look like they are doing something when the best thing they could do with them is to replace them all with something that is up to the job in the first place..
Never going to happen as long as I have a hole in my butt, and there ain't much chance of that healing over....