For the past 30 years, Mark Gregory’s Air Salvage International (ASI) has been assessing, chopping up, disassembling, and recycling planes at the private airfield, which sits two miles from Kemble in Gloucestershire
What connects Saddam Hussein, Tom Cruise and Doctor Who? Cotswolds Airport, of course.
The mass murderer, the action star, and the BBC space drama have all starred, in their own way, at one of the most curious pieces of the aviation industry: the plane graveyard.
For the past 30 years, Mark Gregory’s Air Salvage International (ASI) has been assessing, chopping up, disassembling, and recycling planes at the private airfield, which sits two miles from Kemble in Gloucestershire.
Armed with redundancy money in the early ’90s, Mark bought his first plane and spent six months breaking it down into sellable bits. More than 1,400 aircraft later, the business is thriving and employs dozens of people to cope with the growing demand from the ever-expanding aviation industry.
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And there are big bucks at stake. The equivalent of a commercial jet’s MOT costs around £1 million, which is why many plane owners decide to send their ageing aircraft to Mark instead. Sometimes as much as £12 million can be salvaged from them, either in reusable parts or recyclable materials.
There are a few other strings to the business’s bow, Mark explained as he took me on a tour around the facility.
ASI puts on dramatic training scenarios for organisations including the SAS, helping them practise plane-related emergencies. One mock-up situation had Mark and his team crush a van with a plane fuselage, creating a tricky day out for the special forces, who also had to deal with hijackers and “injured” passengers on board.
The airport and its jets are also movie stars. Countless films have been shot at ASI, including The Fast and the Furious 6, World War Z, Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Mission: Impossible, and Batman. You may also recognise it from small-screen appearances on The One Show, Horizon, Inside Out, Terror in the Skies, Engineering Giants, Casualty and, of course, Doctor Who.
Look closely the next time you see a dramatic plane disaster or runway scene on screen, and you might spot some suspiciously Gloucestershire countryside in the background — or even Mark’s arms.
When not making cash out of old planes or hammering away at the drum kit set up in his runway-side office, the ponytail-sporting scrap magnate can be partially seen on the silver screen, “piloting” the Boeing 727 in its latest movie escapade.
Although many of the firms that send their planes to ASI know exactly what they want back — a demand list that can stretch to 2,000 parts from a single jet — other aircraft meet less formulaic fates.
One big chunk of fuselage ended up in the shadows of The Swarm rollercoaster at Thorpe Park. Others are sent out to aviation buffs who want to decorate their homes with various bits and pieces. Through ASI’s sister site, planestation.aero, you can buy a redundant pilot’s seat for £6,000, or small sections of fuselage with a window for £150. The money raised is spent on the staff Christmas party.
Seat pockets filled with cash-stuffed wallets also occasionally bolster the coffers, although most of these find their way back to their owners.
Another offshoot of the business is crash site investigation. Although downed planes rarely make it to ASI due to the extent of the damage, members of Mark’s team are occasionally called out to inspect the aftermath of major aviation tragedies.
Their expertise in breaking aircraft down makes them particularly useful when it comes to identifying remains and helping determine what went wrong. They were part of the investigation into the Afriqiyah Airways crash in Tripoli, Libya, in 2010, which killed 104 people.
While most of the firm’s planes get broken down and flogged off — sometimes for £10 million for a single jet — Mark Gregory can’t bear to give up certain flying machines that come his way.
One such plane is a VIP-fitted Boeing 727 that was once part of Saddam Hussein’s fleet, after he instructed Iraqi Airways to steal all of Kuwait Airways’ planes during its 1990 invasion of the country. Mark loves the historical significance of the aircraft and its classic ’80s interior.
When owned by the Kuwaiti royal family, the 189-capacity jet was stripped of its standard bum-numbing plane seats and kitted out with enough chintzy furniture to fill a retirement village. We’re talking plush velour seats with extendable footrests, cutting-edge JVC TVs built into mahogany walls, and glass vases filled with plastic roses next to still-unopened bottles of bubbly.
Before Iraqi forces swooped in and took over the Kuwaiti fleet, Emir Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah and other well-heeled royals used the plush plane to jet-set. On a patch of carpet now taken over by mould spores, the Emir would sit in a specially constructed throne, using radio equipment to issue commands to his staff from 30,000 feet.