[10: aviation, airports, flying]

The old warehouse creaks and groans as the sun hits it. The smell of grease
and cardboard wafts from all sides, parts sitting in box after box, shelf
after shelf, stacked twenty five feet up into the steel rafters of the
building.

A staccato voice rings out from the small workshop in front, asking for some
small part or tool to finish retooling a piece of equipment that ceased
manufacture twenty years or more ago, the manufacturer being bought by a
larger company, spun off, bought again, names changed.

Parts get counted and recounted, quality checked, boxes carefully repacked,
then loaded for shipping. 

The warehouse contains, in parts, easily a hundred airplanes. No voluminous
wings or body parts, but every piece of inner workings of almost every
non-commercial plane made since the end of World War II. Parts bought at
auction years prior, carefully catalogued and stowed, and like the
manufacturers, bought, spun off, and bought again, names changed but, in
some essential way, the same as it always has been.

Some of the most valuable parts are name plates -- not the engine or the
pumps or rotors, but just a square piece of brass with screw holes at the
corner and a serial number etched into the center. You can replace every
part on an engine and it'll be the same engine in the eyes of the
government, until that name plate gets changed. It's not a part needed to
fly, but no plane will be flown without one.  They'll fetch a few thousand
dollars for the name plates to some models. 

Parts get shipped off to repair houses in California, Florida, some overseas
to Israel or Japan. Engines get rebuilt, pumps overhauled, fuel systems
checked after every flight. Every screw is catalogued, every pin, seal ring,
and name plate, with a master checklist for every model. There's a reason
air flight is safer than driving: No motorist puts this kind of care into
their car. Not even the obsessives with their shiny sports cars.