For sale: One badly banged-up airliner, with some really nasty water damage.
The Airbus A320 last flown by Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger is being auctioned off by a subsidiary of insurance giant AIG, and could end up as scrap metal worth several million dollars.
Buyer beware — this plane isn’t fit for flight.
“Aircraft suffered severe bird strike event resulting in water emergency landing,” says the insurance company notice.
“Severe water damage throughout airframe. Impact damage to underside of aircraft.”
On top of that, the engines are gone too.
But Chartis Insurance has made sure the plane has been cared for at its current resting place in Kearny, NJ — it applied a corrosion inhibitor last summer.
Prices of recycled aircraft vary, so it’s hard to guess what the A320 would pull at auction — especially without the engines, a possible source of valuable metal and spare parts.
But Metal Bulletin Monthly recently reported that a similar junked Airbus A310 sold for $2.6 million, yielded $4 million when it was broken up for scrap.
AIG and US Airways declined to comment on the pending sale.