In dusty and remote El Mirage, Mark Thomson makes his living by renting out planes that don't fly.
Many of the craft lack wings, and some are just mountains of burnt scrap metal. The former pilot good-naturedly gripes that he doesn't have enough piles of scrap to meet the demands of his customers – mostly Hollywood movie crews.
Good plane scrap is hard to come by, he says.
Mark Thomson's Aviation Warehouse is a sterling example of the oft-quoted axiom "one man's trash is another man's treasure." The High Desert business makes most of its $800,000 in annual revenue by renting as many as 300 decrepit aircraft to movie crews.
It's a market Thomson stumbled across in the mid-1970s, when producers of television's "Emergency" launched him on a course that turned his humble airplane scrap, parts and storage yard into 25 acres of film-industry prop cage.
Hollywood has an unending appetite for aircraft mockups and crash scene wreckage. But owners of working aircraft are loathe to blow up their well-kept machines. Moreover, airports and aircraft manufacturers don't like to keep wrecked planes around – it leaves a bad impression with customers, Thomson noted.
"Hollywood needs these decrepit planes, but all they can find are good ones," he said.
So when Hollywood wants to crash an airplane into a hangar for "Face/Off," collide a bus with an airplane in "Speed" or otherwise use and abuse old aircraft, it goes to El Mirage.
It was an out-of-the-blue call from TV executives that broke Thomson into show biz in the mid-1970s. He had previously done some stunt pilot work for film and had opened an airplane salvage yard in 1969. But at the time, he hadn't thought about combining the two interests.
When "Emergency" executives knocked on Thomson's door, he was in the middle of tearing down an old Boeing 707 for parts, having bought it for $1 from a hangar owner who wanted the plane carcass out of the way. "Emergency" used the old plane in a two-hour special episode about a midair collision, Thomson recalled. After that, the people he worked with on "Emergency" came back representing other shows, with other executives in tow, Thomson said.
His business from Tinseltown customers snowballed. Thomson's planes have appeared in everything from "Independence Day" to "Con-Air," as well as TV shows like "JAG" – one of his favorite regular customers – and even "Days of Our Lives."
Thomson said he doesn't deal in working planes because of the liability involved. By specializing in nonworking craft, he is able to claim as much as half of his average $1,500 a day in rental fees as profit and still charge less than those who rent out working airplanes, he said.
For their rental fees, film crews subject the planes to bruising stunts, wind and weather, and overhead set lights so hot that occasionally the planes' windows melt.
Despite the abuse they suffer at the hands of film crews, Thomson said his planes can nearly always be reused. Sure, a plane he floated on the ocean for six days for "Crash Island" eventually sank during a storm. But the plane that blew up at the end of "Speed" has become almost more useful since the explosion, Thomson said; It's now being used in a TV movie called "Blackout."
Truckloads of other shattered airplane scrap are slated for the movies "Diagnosis Murder" and "Soldier of Fortune." Still another trashed airplane was reconstructed, equipped with a motor and taxied into a collision with a fake aircraft hangar at nearby Southern California International Airport in Victorville for the movie "Face/Off" with John Travolta and Nicolas Cage.
Looking back, Thomson believes he never would have been able to get into the film prop business if he had pitched his services to "Emergency." Hollywood doesn't work that way, he explained, noting that the industry lives up to its "Don't call me; I'll call you" reputation.
"Everything in Hollywood is done by referral," he said.
In addition to Aviation Warehouse's wide selection of aircraft, the company offers a wealth of technical support through its library of 300,000 aircraft and parts manuals, Thomson said.
Thomson's aircraft books and manuals collection fills six buildings on his 15-acre El Mirage property.
One building is entirely devoted to warplanes. Another concentrates on smaller aircraft, like Cessnas and Pipers. Others focus on airplane accessories and radio parts.
Thomson uses the library to answer technical questions from film clientele. He also sells manuals to aircraft enthusiasts, particularly those reconstructing old warplanes.
Companies which make airplane parts also dive into the collection occasionally to document how other companies have used those parts, Thomson said.
The library doesn't make money on its own, but enhances the services Thomson can provide customers, he said.
Meanwhile, Thomson says Aviation Warehouse is doing increasing business in a slightly different field: transporting airplanes on the road for aerospace customers like McDonnell-Douglas Corp.
Because the company's drivers are accustomed to moving big airplanes on highways at night, they are getting hired to move functional airplanes and 94-foot wing sections, Thomson said.
"We've been transporting oversized loads for 25 years without incident," he said.
It's a welcome expansion of his business, Thomson said: "In (show biz), you never know what the next day is going to bring."