Did you notice about Delta's 767 retirement? The airline retires their old planes to
replace them with newer ones, just like the more fuel efficient A350s. But did you know where do the old planes go after their retirement?
By: SkyX
Published on: 15 April 2024, 9.29pm (GMT +8)
Unfortunately, most aircrafts that land up in the boneyards are left to slowly "rot". Photo: Colossal
You may already heard about these airports, full of thousands of old planes. As aviation enthusiasts, it is incredibly sad to see aircrafts that may be dismantled or even in tip-top condition, being left in the airframe boneyards, forgotten. This may sound wild, having thousands of aircrafts just sitting in an airport, untouched, but it's actually one of the hidden realities of the aviation world. For example, we can take a look at Teruel Airport (TEV/LETL), located in the remote countryside of Central Spain. In this airport, rows of dismantled aircrafts can be seen just sitting there. If you hop on Flightradar24, you may sometimes spot some aircrafts landing at that airport. D-AIMB, one of Lufthansa's A380, has been spotted at this particular airport before.
Fortunately, all of the planes at Teruel aren't "dead". The description of the picture above says "Works in progress to return back to the skies". Would this mean that D-AIMB will come back among the Lufthansa fleet? We have no idea for now.
Teruel Airport isn't the only graveyard airport in the world. Let's take a look at Davis-Monthan Airport, located at Tucson. Here, thousands of military aircrafts are parked. It's the largest airport graveyard in the world. Close to Los Angeles, Mojave airport has a "Commercial Airliners Storage" as we can see in Google Maps. It's impressive to see debris of those planes. Here, along a close road, we can distinguish Lufthansa's Boeing 747s, KLM's Boeing 747s or even JAL's Boeing 777s.
The aircraft boneyard in Tucson, Arizona. Photo: Library of Congress
There are many other airplane boneyards around the world, but Southern California Logistics Airport is the last I will present you in this article. Located at the West side of Victorville, CA, the airport shelters hundreds of other airliners. Here again we can see Southwest 737s, old B727s, and also modern aircraft! In the pictures of Google Maps, we can see B787 aircrafts, which is surprising because the aircraft model was just released back in 2009. Perhaps too early for a retirement?
The aircraft boneyard at Southern California Logistics Airport. Photo: Kirby Lee/The USA Today Network
Hopefully, these beautiful aircrafts will take flight into the vast blue skies again, but the aerial pictures of these boneyards are not too promising.
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