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Zantop L-188's being destroyed

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1

1013dot25hPa

Well-known member
Joined
Aug 2, 2005
Posts
60
This morning I was instructed to taxi to 23R via 9L @ YIP and taxied by a bunch of old Zantop L-188's. No news there, they've been sitting there for quite some time now.

But today I saw that one of them was completely destroyed. They're being chopped into very small pieces.

Sad to see. Sure was a nice plane.
 
I was probably accually a piece of crap, that's why it got chopped up. I heard a rumor that someone was buying Zantop's Electras, but the person I heard it from didn't know who. I have seen people over there working on some of them.
 
As with most old aircraft, they are worth the most in the scrapyard. Its sad to see.
 
The Company called Turbo Prop LLC has purchased all the old Zantop Electra’s. They are parting most of them out and hope to put 4 or 5 back in service. There 9 down on the ramp at Hangar Two, plus one in the hangar being parted out. About a month ago they were taxiing one of the L-188's around on its own power.
 
I think anyone who flew them feels the same way, I know it is just about my all time favorite.
 
They chopped up the DC-6 N111AP the other day and it looks like they were chopping up the white and grey one up yesterday. That kinda sucked. Those 2 188's in that row look like they are next. It was good to hear them running on the south ramp a few weeks back, I was in the hanger and thought I heard a familiar sound.
 
I'm sorry to see Electras OR DC-6s being 'recycled'.
But, time passes. Wattr ya goin' to do?:bawling:
I remember seeing 111AP flying.....
 
5512 ex Eastern Airlines Bird in the last photo
 
It's a shame to see. I'm surprised someone is not out there working on a re-engining package where you could slap on some PW150s to the old Electra's or Convairs to make them more fuel efficient. Anyone know what variant of the 501 the Electra had?
 
If I remember right it was the 501 version of the T-56-8. 3950 T/O SHP, 971 TIT max for take off and 932 TIT for max continous.
 
Pretty decent climbout performance when empty, I assume?
 
In the winter at around 70K TOW, they would climb at around 6,000'/min, at 190 kts, to about 10,000'
 
6,000ft/min isn't bad I guess. It's no Cessna 172 ;)
 
Sad indeed

Not many L188's in the world anymore. Some in Europe and one in Mexico I think. Zantop had the world by the goolyonies at one point. What the heck went wrong. DC8's, L188's CV600's DC6's. They ran YIP! Now nothing but a fading memory. Does anyone have any info on turboprop LLC. I wanna L188 ride or job for that matter.
 
CopilotDoug said:
It's a shame to see. I'm surprised someone is not out there working on a re-engining package where you could slap on some PW150s to the old Electra's or Convairs to make them more fuel efficient. Anyone know what variant of the 501 the Electra had?
Click to expand...



The 501's are actually pretty efficent, I think the L-188's had 501-D13's and H-13's. The Convair 580 with the 501-D/H13's only burned about 2000lbs/hr, and the 5800's with the 501-G22's burned alittle less yet had more power and went faster. That's pretty good when you look at the burn on any jet that gets close to that size.
 
Just got old like all of us

The L-188 was a fuel-efficient airplane for sure, 4000#/hrs at 350 kts TAS, good load and performance 36K payload out of 4500' runway. The Navy P-3 would cruise at over 400 Kts. But in the end the maintenance on these old airplanes was their demise. Particularly the shortage and cost of props. What finally did Zantop in was the cost of EGPWS mandated for all 121 airplanes in the spring of 2005.
 
Last edited:
it'd be nice if someone could pick up the airframes and start up an operation using the ex-zantop Electras. If there's money to be made, you know it's in Cargo. Not to HiJack the thread, but does anyone have an idea how many 580s the IFL group has? We saw one of their planes in the conga-line at CLE the other day, tucked in between two ERJ's which looked short and anorexic in comparison.
 
IFL has 4 CV-580's and 3 CV-5800's
 
pilotyip said:
The L-188 was a fuel-efficient airplane for sure, 4000#/hrs at 350 kts TAS, good load and performance 36K payload out of 4500' runway. The Navy P-3 would cruise at over 400 Kts. But in the end the maintenance on these old airplanes was their demise. Particularly the shortage and cost of props. What finally did Zantop in was the cost of EGPWS mandated for all 121 airplanes in the spring of 2005.
Click to expand...

Yip,

I have heard that too, that maintenance costs eventually exceeded any possible return on investment. But, I also heard that Zantop began to fall apart after the Zantop kids took over, something about they couldn't run it efficiently or didn't want anything to do with it. Is there any truth to that or is it another Willow-Rumor?
 
From what I hear, we will be seeing picures of USA Jet aircraft in the same scrap pile in the not too distant future.
 

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