From airplane graveyards to kitchens, Flight tiles have a story

In the hot arid desert in Tucson, Ariz., there’s an airplane graveyard—thousands of retired and junked Cold War-era military aircraft waiting for disposal. Planes are getting retired faster than they could dispose of them. And now, those same planes can be in your home, as tiles.

Two University of Nebraska-Lincoln grads are taking old Air Force plane scrap metal from Tucson, Ariz., melting it down and cutting it into tile in Omaha. The Flight Series tiles launched this week.

In the hot arid desert in Tucson, Ariz., there’s an airplane graveyard—thousands of retired and junked Cold War-era military aircraft waiting for disposal. Planes are getting retired faster than they could dispose of them.

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And now, those same planes can be in your home, as tiles.

A YouTube video about the Military Aircraft Storage and Disposal Center turned Matan Gill, a then-University of Nebraska-Lincoln engineering and sustainability student, onto an idea. Gill’s father, a serial entrepreneur and maker who watched the video with his son, saw an opportunity for Matan: Take the unused planes, tear them apart, get the metal, melt it down, put it into a rectangular mold and slice it into tiles.

A beautiful material with a great back story for high-end homebuilders. A sustainable design solution that closes the loop on a previously under-utilized material. 

And that’s what Gill did in March 2013, smelting the scrap metal in Arizona before having it shipped and sliced into tiles at Tri-V Manufacturing in Omaha. But initial investors wanted perfection: A sleek aluminum product. That’s not what came out of the final product. There were holes. It had texture.

“Those imperfections were the beauty of it,” Gill said. “We ran with it.”

This week, Flight Series Tile officially launched. 

Gill and business partner Garth Britzman, a fellow UNL graduate, are bootstrapping the lean operation by themselves so far. They hope to bring on investors at some point.

The 22-year-old entrepreneurs are working out of FUSE Co-working in the Haymarket in Lincoln.

“I think it’s a great advantage in the Midwest,” Gill said. “We’re thankful for the Lincoln community. They’ve given us resources, space, a warm welcome.”

The pair see the tiles going in higher-end homes. They are on the more-expensive end: $48 a square foot.

“They can be used in kitchens as a backsplash or in bathrooms or around a modern fireplace,” Britzman said. “It can be used in a contemporary vibe, but it also has a warmer feel. Wood, stone and marble all have that character in it that our airplane aluminum has.”

It also may be something the eco-conscious or Air Force veterans may be interested in. 

“The tiles do have a story to them,” Gill said. “We saw an opportunity to give new life to this immense resource and created a product with a rich history.”

The tiles require only a fraction of the energy required to produce new aluminum tiles.

“It’s something we’re exceptionally proud of,” Gill said. “Our commitment to environmentally responsible products is paramount in our design philosophy.”

This story is part of the AIM Archive

This story is part of the AIM Institute Archive on Silicon Prairie News. AIM gifted SPN to the Nebraska Journalism Trust in January 2023. Learn more about SPN’s origin »

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