Boeing 777 stuck for years after parts started being ripped off it for other planes and it spiraled horribly

A Boeing 777 isn’t meant to sit still.

It’s built to cross oceans, rack up hours, and earn its keep in the air.

But one widebody jet ended up going nowhere for years.

And once parts started disappearing, the situation only got worse.

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How a routine Boeing 777 maintenance check got out of control

In February 2020, an Air India Boeing 777 was flown to Nagpur for routine heavy maintenance, scheduled to be carried out at the Air India Engineering Services Ltd. (AISEL) maintenance repair and overhaul (MRO) hangar.

This kind of check is totally normal. 

Planes get pulled apart, inspected, fixed, and stitched back together. 

It’s like a full medical check-up, but for a jet. 

Normally, it takes weeks. 

Sometimes a couple of months.

This one never finished.

Parts were delayed, work slowed, deadlines slipped, and while the plane sat there, other Boeing 777s still needed to fly.

So engineers did what airlines sometimes do in a pinch: they borrowed parts from the grounded plane.

Need a component urgently? 

Take it off the one that isn’t flying. 

Replace it later.

But that plan only works if ‘later’ actually comes.

More parts were taken. 

Then more. 

And each time, the stuck 777 became harder to put back together. 

At some point, it stopped being a plane waiting to fly again and turned into a spare-parts vending machine for other jets.

Years passed, and the aircraft never got the clearance needed to return to service. 

What started as routine maintenance quietly snowballed into a full-blown grounding that nobody could easily undo.

Why using parts from one plane to save others usually ends badly

This practice – called cannibalisation – sounds dramatic, but it’s real.

And it works… short-term. 

It helps to keep flights stay on schedule so that passengers aren’t disrupted and everyone keeps moving.

But it creates a problem for later. 

Every borrowed part has to be replaced. 

If it isn’t, one aircraft takes all the damage.

Big planes like the Boeing 777 are incredibly expensive, and once they fall behind on inspections and certifications, fixing them gets harder and pricier fast. 

Eventually, the math stops working.

When supply chains fail and airlines are stretched thin, ‘temporary’ fixes can suddenly turn permanent. 

And even a plane built to circle the globe can end up stuck in one place, slowly disappearing piece by piece.

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