The end of 2018 saw the retirement of two relatively young aircraft, 2 TUIfly Boeing 737s were flown to Twente Airport where they will be dismantled by AELS.

Halfway November 2018 AELS announced that they had acquired two Boeing 737s that would arrive on the 1st and 5th of December. This was thus mentioned as a nice “Sinterklaas” present. Not long after, it became clear through research that these 2 machines would originate from TUIfly in Germany and that D-AHXE and D-AHXF would be the ones concerned.

These airframes are only 11 years old and have logged approximately 30,000 flying hours, which makes you wonder why they are dismantled already. The reason behind this is that they are of the 737-700 subtype, which is far less popular than the 737-800. However, the 737-700 and 737-800 share most of the components and parts, which makes it interesting to salvage these parts from the 737-700 and sell them to 737-800 operators. In this way the airframe becomes much more valuable in parts than it is as a whole.

In the final week of november, suddenly the news came that the schedule had changed: D-AHXE would arrive on the 30th of November, whilst D-AHXF would arrive on the 1st of December.

30 November 2018 – Arrival of D-AHXE

Boeing 737-7K5 D-AHXE was the first of the 2 sisters to arrive at Twente Airport. Just before 11.30 it departed Hannover Langenhagen airport as flight TUI100P and flew to Twente Airport where she performed her final touchdown on runway 23 at 12.06PM. Check the flight on https://flightaware.com/live/flight/DAHXE

The crew then then taxied to the C platform, where the engines were shut down for the final time. She would be parked at this location for the night and would be towed to the AELS platform on Saturday.

1 December 2018 – Arrival of D-AHXF

Originally it was planned that D-AHXF would also arrive around 11.30 on the Saturday, but after consulting the weather forecast, it was decided to reschedule to an earlier time, as rain and low clouds were expected. As Twente is still a VFR only airport, the cloud base needs to be sufficient for visual operations.

This meant that the departure from Hannover Langenhagen was scheduled at 9.30 already (D-AHXF had still operated a commercial flight to Lanzarote on the day before), after which it landed at Twente at 10.04 (see https://flightaware.com/live/flight/DAHXF for the complete flight). This time, the engines where shut down on the runway, after which the towtruck was attached in order to push the Boeing to the AELS platform next to Hangar 8.

Upon arrival at Hangar 8, the crew was greeted by a very special guest: Sinterklaas awaited them. As the crew was not really aware of this Dutch tradition, some explanation was required….

When the D-AHXF was parked, it was time to pick up the D-AHXE and tow her to the AELS platform where these 2 sisters were reunited. For them it’s now the end of the line….