EOL aircraft recycling projects have been receiving lots of attention in aviation industry considering the green image of manufacturers and the sustainable development objectives. Despite the large amount of investment in these projects, there is still a lack of research on how it should be accomplished to be successful. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to derive critical success factors for the successful implementation of EOL aircraft recycling project. We hypothesize that there are certain factors in different phases of the life cycle of the projects that positively impact their success. A spiral model is used to consider project lifecycle phases, the role of key stakeholders and the influential factors in different phases. This research seems to be the first practical study on the management issues of EOL aircraft recycling projects.