[cyberferret]

A friend of mine was a ferry pilot for the airlines. But essentially, a crew flies the plane out to its storage destination, and there is usually transport arranged out for them - either a bus, or a smaller corporate jet or even a piston engine a/c would be flown out with them to carry them back home or to their next deployment location.

As for them returning to service, yes, you guessed right - they have to be checked while still on the ground by a maintenance team, then if they have been there for a while, they have to be flown to a maintenance base for fairly extensive servicing before they can be declared airworthy enough to carry passengers again.

With luck, this airport probably has a service hangar capable of handling these aircraft types and make them airworthy again, so I expect that the airline might find it more economical to ship an entire maintenance team with spare parts to be based out of here for a month or so while they get their planes back in the air.

[cromka]

Since the procedures require such extensive checks after those dormant planes' return to service, wouldn't you say that once all of them become airborne again, statistically speaking the risk of catastrophic failures is going to increase? I am afraid well see some accidents end of this year...

[hef19898]

That's not likely. The checks to get the grounded aircraft back in air are quite extensive. And similar checks are regularly conducted under normal conditions anyway.

It might even be the case that we see less accidents, as more aircraft are getting extensive checks than before. As long as maintenance is done correctly that is. Which was true before already as well