Originally Posted by
atakacs
I have always been of the possibly not substantiated opinion that all was done to make sure she would never fly again.
atakacs,
Opinions and remarks like yours really belong on forums like "SCG" or the comments columns of tabloids....
But I'll try to answer you.
The aircraft were "decommissioned".
That means that they were fully prepared as public museum exhibits, rather than being "mothballed", ready to be put back into service.
The purpose was
not to make sure they would never fly again, it was to make sure they were safe for the public to visit.
That included draining all fuel, hydraulic liquid, etc.
That meant removing all pyrotechnics, like those in the RAT.
That implied venting and/or removing all high-pressure vessels, such as the emergency slides, fire bottles, oxygen systems, nitrogen tanks.
In the case of the BA aircraft, it also meant removing the electric ground power connections, to avoid incompetent amateurs trying to put ground power back on the aircraft, and start a fire.
Most of these things could have been rectified quite easily. But there was
no intent to ever fly
any of these aircraft again, so there was no effort made to "mothball" the aircraft, which would have been done quite differently, such as inerting some of the systems, dropping all of the engines, etc. and, far more importantly, keep a maintenance structure in place, not allow public access to any of the aircraft, etc.
Once Airbus relinquished the Type Certificate, that was the end.
...it would have been possible to nicely package all remaining spares and technical documentation
Nice one...
You clearly have no idea what that would have been involved.
Just the spares alone... most of them are "lifed", and would regularly need to be either retested and requalified, or would have to be binned and replaced.
.. not mentioning the reckless butchering of many airframes.
Quite what are you talking about here? No airframes were "recklessly butchered", unless you're talking about Fox-Delta, which was not really worth saving because of serious corrosion.
CJ