Authorities in other countries have done the same. In 2015, the United Kingdom’s Civil Aviation Authority and the FAA worked together to blow up a retired Air France Boeing 747-100 jumbo jet at Bruntingthorpe Aerodrome north of London. Three years earlier, the Discovery Channel paid to smash a remote-controlled Boeing 727 into the desert near Mexicali, Mexico. Similar to the FAA-NASA test in 1984, researchers filmed the impact from the exterior and interior and turned the event into a television special.

Private companies have also used destructive testing to explore potential ways to mitigate or defeat terrorist bombs on airliners. In 2015, a European consortium led by a U.K.-based company called Blastech blew apart cargo holds from an Airbus 321 and a Boeing 747 to test prototypes of a system called Fly-Bag, intended to contain the explosion within the compartment to keep a plane aloft and the crew and passengers safe.

We don’t know exactly how long ATC’s own effort has been going on, but in 2012 the Army put out a similar contract to buy a single Embraer ERJ-145 regional jetliner for destructive testing. The next year, pictures showed portions of an Airbus A300 and Boeing 737, 757, and 767 aircraft sitting at Phillips, according to a story from Aviation Week. In August 2013, the Army put the ex-China Airlines A300 hulk up for sale to make room for another jet.

Clear Sky Aviation, which has a nearly non-existent web presence, was also able to sweeten its proposal by noting that it has delivered aircraft to the Army for these purposes in the past. The company said it had flown at least one Airbus A300, as well as a Boeing 757 and 767 types – the ones seen in the 2013 images, to Aberdeen for previous experiments.

According to the final contract, HZ-AKF is supposed to touch down at Aberdeen in November 2018, but we don’t know when the actual tests might occur. But if anyone spots the jet flying in, they might be seeing it for the very last time!

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