ANA Launches auction of old aircraft parts and memorabilia

ALL NIPPON AIRWAYS B787-9 JA873A (MSN 34530)    File Photo

All Nippon Airways (ANA) aircraft parts and memorabilia are going up for sale on a Japanese online auction site later this month. ANA calls the items one-of-a-kind parts and valuable airline goods. Delving through the PR guff, everything from small items like key rings to not so small items like first class suites, are up for bids.

Beginning September 21, SorANAka Yahoo! Auctions Store will start accepting bids. First up is an original ANA international first class mock-up seat and a Boeing 777-300ER window frame.
ANA calls it an “effective use of retired aircraft parts”.

Part of the profit from the auction will be donated to an external charity such as the Japanese Red Cross or Save the Children.

It isn’t the first time All Nippon Airways has monetized aircraft memorabilia. Earlier this year, the airline did a brisk trade flogging off bar carts. Despite weighing over 20 kilograms, ANA reportedly sold 220 surplus carts over a three-month period for around US$1000 each. One buyer described the bar carts as “very convenient and functional.”

“A lot of things can be put in a cart, which people usually see only onboard, and it would look nice by just placing it in a room,” an ANA flight attendant told Japanese media outlet The Mainichi. Alas the ANA bar carts came empty. Last year, Qantas sold 1,000 former Boeing 747 bar carts in two hours. Also priced around US$1000, the Qantas bar carts were thoughtfully filled with 160 miniature wine bottles, two full-size bottles of champagne, and a decent supply of snacks to help soak it all up.

ANA has also sold some interesting gear from retired Boeing 767-300 aircraft. According to The Mainichi, this year ANA has sold four thrust levers priced at about $10,900, four control sticks priced between $6,800 and $7,300, nine cockpit ceiling panels for $2,000 each, and three sets of mock-up passenger seats for between $5,500 and $6,400 each.

All Nippon Airlines has also found success selling inflight food. In March ANA sold over 264,000 economy class inflight meals, making $1.8 million in the process.

“Each time we place the meals on our online market site, they sell out within 45 minutes on average, an ANA spokesperson said at the time. “Some items were gone in five minutes.”


Monetizing airline food is a particularly Asian shtick. Malaysia Airlines, Air Asia, Singapore Airlines, and THAI have all turned to it since the travel downturn. Cash-strapped airlines outside the region haven’t ventured down this road. Quite possibly that’s because the economy meal product on so many western legacy airlines is so awful they’d get laughed off the internet.

Indeed, not many airlines outside the Asia region have turned to these gimmicky style stunts to keep their regular passengers engaged. Gimmicky can be good. You’d have to figure there would be a few punters across the United States happy to shell out cash or points for a seat out of a retired AA aircraft, or perhaps a Delta branded cabin partition.

ANA fanboys and fangirls can find out all about the upcoming auction on the Yahoo Japan website.

Below is from the auction website
As the first installment of the SorANAka Yafuoku store, the company will exhibit products for Boeing 777-300ER aircraft on international aircraft. First Class mock-up (model) seats and window frames for both first and business classes will be accepted from 10:00 a.m. on Thursday, with the end scheduled to end around 9-10 p.m. on Thursday. The bid start amount is 7,730 yen for mockups and 773 yen for window frames. The second series will be exhibited around October, and in addition to mock-up seats for international business class, a model plane of the 747-400 (registration symbol JA8094) and an aircraft identification plate (nameplate) of JA8094 will be prepared. In April, SorANAka opened in Rakuten Ichiba as a new mail-order site that deals with food specialties from all over Japan. They sell ordered gourmet dishes such as miso ramen sets from Hokkaido and izakaya sets from Hakata. Yafuoku will be SorANAka's second store. Ana All Japan Trading co., Ltd. has been operating its own mail order site "ANA STORE/ ANA Shopping A-style" since 2000, mainly targeting members of ANA Mileage Club (AMC), ANA's mileage system. A-style also sells goods such as aircraft parts, but A-style sells multiple in-flight carts and processed parts for a fixed amount. At the SorANAka Yafuoku store, the company aims to increase the number of sales channels by offering a single item such as sheets at auction.






Story sourced from here (with additions)
ANA Launches Auction Of Old Aircraft Parts And Memorabilia - Simple Flying