Grounded for two years, waiting for one engine
Boeing 757-200 · N757AF
Almost everything else on this board is a purpose-built business jet. This is an airliner.
N757AF is a Boeing 757-200 built in 1991 — a narrow-body that spent its first life carrying fare-paying passengers for a Danish operator before passing through other hands and being bought in 2011 from the Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen. It is powered by two Rolls-Royce RB211-535E4s, an engine so well regarded that it hangs under more than half of every 757 ever delivered.
The 757 has a reputation among pilots that has outlived its production line. It was over-engined almost by accident, which gave it startling climb performance and the ability to work short runways and hot, high airfields that its size does not suggest. Aircrew are fond of it in a way that spreadsheets never explained.
The part worth knowing is what happened next. The aeroplane sat at an airport in upstate New York from 2019, out of service, essentially because a serviceable engine of the right type was not to be had. It was eventually restored in 2021 and moved south to Florida the following year.
That is a useful corrective to the idea that money makes aviation frictionless. A twenty-year-old airliner needs a specific large lump of rotating machinery, and if that lump is not available it does not matter who owns the aircraft. It sits on the ramp like anything else.
What we have actually seen: picked up airborne
15 times since we started
logging on 14 July 2026, most
recently 25 September, at up to
41,025 ft.
Every other jet on the board is below.