Civilian aircraft parked in Indian airport for 24 years, here's why
- By Web Desk -
- Oct 13, 2021
A Boeing 720 aircraft is parked at the Nagpur airport in India for the past 24 years after it made an emergency landing due to engine problems.
The jet had landed in Nagpur back in 1941 and but never took off again.
A Twitter user named Chris Croy explained that his father Sam was working as a mechanic in the Brown Field Municipal Airport. He flew the jet from the United States.
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“Some time in 1990 my dad, an airplane mechanic at Brown Field Municipal airport, saw a guy circling the abandoned Boeing 720,” Croy tweeted. “It had been resting in the dry desert air ever since the previous owner, Kenneth Copeland, had ditched it a couple of years back for reasons unknown.”
Croy’s father was asked to fix the aircraft and fly it to India.
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“Modern jets are required to be much quieter and more efficient than they used to be. Planes today are about 1/4th as loud as they were in the 1950s! It’s possible to retrofit a dinosaur from the 1950s like the Boeing 720 to be compliant, but India’s rules were, uh, Different.
The aircraft had to be flown from Tijuana for getting the testing phase complete while the paperwork was done by Croy’s mother with the Federal Aviation Authority (FAA). The aircraft was then flown to India.
They reached India but engine problems forced them to land at Nagpur.
“They initially left it on the runway itself, but it was quickly towed 300 feet away, but still that’s way too close for regulations or comfort and it should have been moved much farther immediately, but it wasn’t and so it’s a story,” Croy stated.
The government had warned the airport authorities to move the plane to safety or have the license stripped off.