Is Your Plane Too Old? Do you check your plane age and get concerned if its 10, 15, 20, 25 years old? Why planes don't age the way you think.

Airliners are literally pulled apart and rebuilt to new or better specifications every 5-8 years or so, depending on takeoff/landing cycles or total flight time.

They don't age like a car or whatever. The airplane you're flying on might have all brand-new components, even if it's "old."

It would be similar to requiring your car to be literally stripped down to bare metal, get a new engine/transmission, new cooling system, new wheels/tires/brakes, new electrical system, component updates to new/better bits, a new interior, and a repaint every 20,000 miles. So you'd have what amounts to a new car every 20k miles.

And that's not even getting into the daily checks and maintenance an airliner is required to have.

25 years is nothing for an airplane. There are 78-year-old DC-3s still in regular service. In Antarctica (think about the harshness of that environment for a second). And they're some of the most reliable airplanes doing that job.

I'd happily fly on a 30 year-old airliner anywhere.