California, USA: It is hard to find a more anti-cyclical part of the aviation business than desert storage. While airline bankruptcies and overcapacity is bad for aircraft owners, maintenance shops, financiers and almost everyone involved in the market, desert storage facilities quickly fill up. However, aircraft are being taken out of storage. There are still hundreds of mothballed aircraft in the US -mostly at Marana Airport in Arizona, and at Victorville and Mojave in California - but most parks have fallen from record highs. Avtel Services, a contract maintenance operation at Mojave that also preserves aircraft and parts for sale or reuse, reached a record high of 310 in July 2002. By July 2003, this number had dropped to 210 and, to date, there are only 150 aircraft in storage. "We are getting about the same amount of aircraft coming in that are going out," says Vern Alexander, marketing director for Avtel. "Volume has been stable at 150 for the past four months."
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