FEATURE-Planes still in 'dry dock' 7 months after 9-11 Friday April 5, 2:40 PM EST By Doug Young MOJAVE, Calif., April 5 (Reuters) - A US Airways (U) Boeing 737 glides across the California desert sky before making its final approach and landing at the sprawling Mojave Airport in a remote area about 100 miles north of Los Angeles. But unlike the hundreds of other flights US Air operates daily, the path traveled by this plane will have a markedly different end point. Upon landing, the aircraft will spend about a day in the desert before a team of maintenance specialists prepares it for storage, covering its windows, doors and wheel wells with a shiny industrial foil. The plane will then join hundreds of others at the desert facility for weeks, months, or even years until its owner puts it back into service, sells it, or simply scraps it. The 300-odd planes now parked in rows outside Mojave Airport stand as testament to the lingering fallout of the Sept. 11 attacks, which saw airlines pull hundreds of aircraft from service as they cancelled flights in a mad dash to remain financially viable. A trickle of planes have left the desert to return to the skies in the last few months, but for every one that goes out another half dozen more come in, airport officials said. US Airways is hardly alone in its use of Mojave as a storage area. Other major airlines occupying space there include Continental Airlines (CAL), American Airlines (AMR), Southwest Airlines (LUV) and Hawaiian Airlines (HA), to name just a few. Also represented at the airport is overnight shipping company FedEx Corp. (FDX), which has 17 jets parked on the sand. But US Airways, which has struggled of late, is presently the airport's biggest tenant, with about 120 US Air and MetroJet planes parked at the facility. The company, whose active fleet is now about 330 planes, last week said it had reached agreements to sell 97 of their older jets, many of them already grounded at Mojave, as well as engines and spare parts. The airport's next biggest user, Continental, has about 50 jets parked at the facility. UNPRECEDENTED Mojave and the Southern California Logistics Airport, another desert airport about 100 miles (160 kms) to the east of Los Angeles, have become two of the nation's largest repositories for airplanes whose services have not been needed since Sept. 11. At Southern California Logistics airport, about 260 airplanes are now being stored, most of them from United Airlines (UAL), Delta Air Lines (DAL) and the former TWA, which is now owned by American, an airport spokeswoman said. Dan Sabovich, who retired as general manager of Mojave Airport earlier this week after 30 years on the job, says the current situation is unprecedented in his experience. "This is the worst as far as airplanes coming in," Sabovich said. In the late '90s, the airlines were having financial and logistical problems, he said. "They parked a bunch of (planes) here back then. But it was nothing like now." Sabovich estimated that if current conditions persist, planes would continue to arrive at the rate of five to six more per week until the total number could peak at closer to 400. FLOOD OF NEW ARRIVALS Indeed, the stream of planes that began to arrive at the airport shortly after Sept. 11 was just the beginning of a flood that would reach a high point in December, and continue well into this year. About 100 planes were stored at the airport before Sept. 11, but that number grew by about 30 in the weeks after the attacks, according to airport records. The number jumped by another 70 jets in October -- the biggest single month for new arrivals -- before easing off in November. In January and February, new arrivals numbered in the 20s before dropping to about 15 in March, marking the lowest level of new arrivals since before September 11. Sabovich said the desert provides an ideal setting for the storage of aircraft because of the dry air. "There's no dew and less rain and moisture that can tend to corrode stuff," he said. He added that Mojave Airport receives anywhere from $100 to $200 per parked plane per month, depending on size and number of planes in storage. The airport's cut comes out of a larger fee paid by the airlines to the prime contractor, Avtel Services, which handles the business as well as maintenance. Sabovich said the process of returning a plane to service is relatively straightforward, involving removal of the aluminum foil and restarting the systems, many of which are run periodically as part of routine maintenance. But the stream of planes returning to service has been painfully slow, Sabovich said. "This is the worst I've seen," he said. "A few of them have been going back into service. It seems like it's getting better, but it's slow." Roger La France EWR CO767 or ewrgateman on IAM