<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by og:
Strange to think that at the "magic" age or number of cycles, a perfectly good aircraft (all be it looking like crap inside) suddenly has only scrap value.</font>
Intuitively yes, except that due to the wonders of engineering fatigue, what may look like a perfectly good aircraft after 26,000-odd cycles might actually have you shuddering if you could see the small cracks developing in critical areas.
Nostalgia notwithstanding, I'm more than happy to see aircraft of this era retired after 25,000 cycles. It's the maintenance checks required to certify/render them metallurgically safe that just don't make economical sense.