The Air Force Retired the KC-10 in 2024. One Just Flew Out of the Boneyard for a Private Tanker Company

The buyer is Omega Air, a contractor that refuels military jets for hire, and the FAA register now lists ten former Air Force Extenders in its name.

On Oct. 20, 2026, a KC-10 Extender took off from Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona, the desert boneyard where the Air Force parks the aircraft it no longer wants. It was former USAF serial 86-0034, now wearing the civil registration N82247.

Flight-tracking data showed it heading for San Antonio, the main base of Omega Air Refueling, according to The War Zone, which first reported the flight. Photographer Maxim Loshak caught the departure.

The jet had been sitting in storage since May 12, 2023. The last Air Force KC-10 followed it into retirement 16 months later, and since then the government has started selling the stored jets.

How a Retired Tanker Ended Up for Sale

The McDonnell Douglas KC-10 Extender is a military DC-10, a three-engine wide-body airliner fitted with a refueling boom, a hose-and-drogue system and extra fuel tanks under the cargo floor. It entered service in 1981.

The drawdown began on July 13, 2020, when a KC-10 from the 305th Air Mobility Wing in New Jersey landed at the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group, the formal name of the boneyard. On arrival it became a source of spare parts for the 58 jets still flying.

The end came on Sept. 26, 2024, at Travis Air Force Base, California. After a farewell ceremony, the last operational Extender left for Davis-Monthan after 44 years in service.

Then, in April 2025, the government put ten of the stored jets up for public auction on GSA Auctions. Tail 86-0034 was on the list.

They were sold as wrecks, on paper at least. An Air Force spokesperson called all ten “non-flyable.” Eight were missing an engine, sold off separately in 2021, and every one had lost its refueling boom to the active fleet as a spare.

The Air Force told bidders they would need to work with Boeing for a “fly-away kit” just to seal the hole where the boom used to be. N82247 flew out on Oct. 20 without one: there is still no boom under its tail.

The Numbers That Made the KC-10 Worth Saving

The Air Force bought 60 Extenders between 1979 and 1987. One was destroyed in a 1987 explosion and fire at Barksdale Air Force Base, which left a fleet of 59.

Each one could carry more than 356,000 pounds (160,200 kg) of fuel across six tanks, almost twice as much as a KC-135 Stratotanker, according to the Air Force fact sheet. Its boom could pass fuel at up to 1,100 gallons (4,180 liters) a minute.

It could also refuel Air Force jets by boom and Navy or allied jets by hose on the same mission. Over its first 40 years the fleet flew about 2,255,000 hours and 409,000 sorties, the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center reported in 2020.

Now look at the FAA aircraft register. In the FAA’s releasable database downloaded on Oct. 21, 2026, it lists ten McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30F airframes under Omega Air Inc. of Selma, Texas, all registered between Sept. 29 and Oct. 9, 2026.

Ten is exactly the size of the 2025 auction lot. N82247, registered on Oct. 6, is one of them, and none of the ten shows an airworthiness certificate date yet.

Why a Private Company Wants Air Force Tankers

Omega is not new to the type. It already flies two former Royal Netherlands Air Force KDC-10s that carry booms, plus a DC-10 set up for hose-and-drogue refueling only and a fleet of Boeing 707 tankers.

Contractors like Omega sell aerial refueling to the military, which takes pressure off its own tankers. The War Zone notes that the ability of the Air Force’s own tanker fleets to meet even peacetime demand has been a growing concern for years.

Part of the reason is the Boeing KC-46 Pegasus, the Extender’s replacement, which has been dogged by persistent technical problems. The Air Force says 88 KC-46s had been delivered by September 2024, the month the last KC-10 retired.

The KC-10 also carried more fuel than the KC-46, according to The War Zone. Our ranking of every aerial refueling tanker in service by fuel load puts those figures side by side.

What Omega does with all ten is not settled. The War Zone reports that it could fit new booms, leave some as hose-only tankers, strip some for parts, or fly a few in non-tanker roles.

The Next Four May Go to North Africa

Omega may not be the only new KC-10 operator. On Oct. 7, 2026, the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center posted a market-research notice seeking companies able to regenerate up to four stored KC-10s.

The jets would go “via Excess Defense Articles (EDA) to a partner nation in North Africa,” The War Zone reported. The work would run from regeneration and ferry delivery to three to five years of maintenance and training support, and AirData News reports that responses are due Oct. 28.

The notice does not name the country, and it is a request for information, not a contract. Outlets including The Aviationist point to Egypt or Morocco as the likeliest candidates, but neither has been confirmed.

Congress has a say in the rest. The FY2026 defense bill told the Air Force to keep its remaining retired KC-10s in the same storage condition they were in on Sept. 30, 2025, while still letting it dispose of them under existing property law.

That leaves 49 other Extenders whose condition is unclear. One of the ten the Air Force called non-flyable is now headed for Texas, and the Air Force is now asking industry how to make four more fly again.