
Where Planes Go to Die: A One Way Trip to the Mojave Boneyard (2015) - uptown
http://www.scoutingla.com/where-planes-go-to-die-a-one-way-trip-to-the-mojave-boneyard/
======
tuna-piano
For those interested in freely visiting somewhere like this, there are a few
planes (including a 747) rotting on a plot of land in Bangkok. It's called the
"Airplane Graveyard"[1,2].

When I went, a Mother+Son seemed to have the place fenced off, and asked for
$6 (200 baht) to let me in. I happily paid and had a great time walking
around, taking pictures, and climbing through the airplanes. It was fun
climbing up the back of a 747, going up the stairs, hanging out in the
cockpits, out doors, on wings, etc.

When I was there, there were no other tourists there (as I assume is usually
the case). You have to be careful, as there are scraps and sharp things
everywhere (though everything small seems to have been taken). One of the
airplanes seemed to have someone (homeless?) sleeping in it, so I left it
alone.

On the way out, the ~6 year old boy living there with his Mom asked me for
another $6 before he unlocked the gate, but I told him I already paid. I
argued for maybe 30 seconds and by chance another tourist showed up and the
kid opened the gate for that guy and I left. Not sure what would have happened
if the kid kept asking for money.

[1] [http://triphackr.com/visiting-the-airplane-graveyard-in-
bang...](http://triphackr.com/visiting-the-airplane-graveyard-in-bangkok/)

[2] [https://www.wheresidewalksend.com/bangkok-airplane-
graveyard...](https://www.wheresidewalksend.com/bangkok-airplane-graveyard/)

~~~
nasredin
>Not sure what would have happened if the kid kept asking for money.

Depending on the situation bluffing may work.

Just name drop somebody "important".

Also learned this from... John McAfee:

Do not get out of the car at checkpoints/shakedowns.

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matthewmcg
Great photo series. It's worth noting that not _all_ of the planes are there
permanently. Many are there in long-term storage and would be flyable with
some maintenance.

~~~
ChuckMcM
I was going to add this as well. I have visited the Mojave airfield and "space
port" a number of times, both when Rotary Rocket and Scaled Composites were
active there and later as part of a group that was looking into wind turbine
efficiency (there are big turbines up on the ridge to Tehachapi) A bunch of
planes there have come off lease and are being held pending new leasing
arrangements, those are basically ready to fly. Some have used up their cycle
count (landings/takeoffs/pressurization/depressurization cycles) and act as
spare parts for similar models still flying. One clue is the ones that have
had their winglets removed are generally 'donor dollies' where the owner has
started parting them out to recover what remaining value they have.

I would also love to crawl around the military depot in Arizona but so far
have come up short on a good enough reason :-).

~~~
mc32
Given at least some of these aircraft have reached their usable lifecycle and
presumably those stressed parts can't go back into similar aircraft at that
point, why aren't the materials being recycled more?

Is it too costly to recycle these alloys? One might think that if aluminum
drink cans are worthwhile recycling, more massive aircraft parts would also be
profitable to recycle.

~~~
ChuckMcM
That is a good question, and it was the subject of a paper in 2007
([http://www.phinix.net/services/Recycling/Recycling_Aluminum_...](http://www.phinix.net/services/Recycling/Recycling_Aluminum_Aerospace_Alloys.pdf))
which basically says that aircraft alloys have a lot of impurities to improve
their toughness which makes it harder to recycle them into something useful.

~~~
mc32
Thanks, that's interesting. Although it seems to presume that the recycled
aluminum alloys would go back into aircraft and thus would need further
[relatively costly] processing/refining to remove impurities and meet modern
specs.

However, unless expensive to process at all (recycle) they could be recycled
for other uses --like park bench frames, ladders, food service furniture, new
truck beds, camper tops, etc. I can see where cheap iron may be more economic
than even recycled aluminum though.

~~~
ChuckMcM
It is a solid idea. One of the things I have done a little research on is the
question of planned economic communities. One possible engine in that type of
community would be recycling.

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toomanybeersies
It would be amazing if you could go there like pick-a-part for car parts and
pick your own aircraft parts.

Some of those propellers and other parts would make amazing decor. The huge
amounts of sheet metal could be put to good use too, I'm sure.

~~~
bri3d
Aircraft junkyards are a thing - google "air salvage" and you'll find quite a
few. Listed parts prices for usable parts are often high but they're usually
friendly folks and could probably help you out with scraps. The Lowry air
museum in Denver has a small sport aircraft built entirely of junkyard parts
and flown by a private pilot for years in it, and I wish I could recall the
name of it.

~~~
Gravityloss
[http://nortonsalesinc.com/](http://nortonsalesinc.com/)

I know rockets have been built out of these salvaged parts. A lot of money has
gone into developing some of them.

~~~
reacharavindh
Wonder what this guy could do with access to salvage parts like that..

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-
india-41813389](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-india-41813389)

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acidburnNSA
My brother as a kid found this on Google Earth or maybe even terraserver
(which was an early host of satellite imagery of earth, I think from
Microsoft) and obsessed over it forever.

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chiph
The Army has a boneyard in Northern California near the Nevada state line.

[https://goo.gl/maps/JnJBvefnT5G2](https://goo.gl/maps/JnJBvefnT5G2)

There's lots of M1 Abrams in storage there, as well as munitions in bunkers
that were built for WW-II (to be clear - the munitions are pretty modern - the
bunkers are the vintage part of that. Old/obsolete/unsafe munitions are
disposed of.)

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peteretep
Apologies for the extreme nerd pedantry, but...

When he gets into the TG 747, he emerges in First, and then later makes his
way to Business, rather than Business then First as he describes. Also the
seats he's describing as leather-covered are fabric upholstered. I was on one
of these a few days ago, as TG are still flying them, and with the hard
product shown.

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Theodores
The featured C-133 propeller driven planes were death-traps when they were
new, the chance of any of the ones in museums needing spare parts from the
boneyard to make them air-worthy so we can see-off those pesky Russians is
just not a good enough reason to hold on to these old air-frames. Yet they
have kept them rather than put them through the recycling. Why hold onto these
things for fifty years, do they have a procrastination problem?

Compared to the air force boneyard in Arizona - Davis Monthan AFB - this
boneyard is miniscule so maybe they are doing a really good job of recycling
all those 747s nobody needs and have their own reasons for keeping the junk.
Fascinating the place may be, it could be tidier.

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matthberg
Does anyone know how to access this, or if tours or gates are open to the
public?

~~~
uptown
The last line of the post states:

"The Mojave Boneyard is available for film shoots – send me an email if
interested. Unfortunately, no tours are offered at this time, and the facility
is strictly off-limits."

~~~
matthberg
Thank you! Fascinating stuff, a shame there's no access but it makes sense for
safety reasons.

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HeyLaughingBoy
_American 9643, Tampa Tower, line up and wait Runway 01L_

A long time ago when I was a student PP, the standard terminology would have
been "American 9643, Tampa Tower. Taxi to position Runway 01L and hold.
Acknowledge hold" at any airport I ever flew out of.

Did this change in the 25 years or so since I last sat in the left seat or is
it just the reporter's interpretation? Then again, over a couple decades,
jargon can be expected to evolve...

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madengr
Just need some feral children chanting about Capn’ Walker.

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baxtr
Great photos, I’m so glad that they weren’t posted on Instagram...

Nice round-up at the bottom of the page:

 _In the end, the Boneyard gets us all._

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ckastner
There's an even larger (huge, in fact) graveyard in Tucson, Arizona:

[https://www.google.com/maps/@32.1589671,-110.8350419,2145m/d...](https://www.google.com/maps/@32.1589671,-110.8350419,2145m/data=!3m1!1e3)

~~~
romwell
That "graveyard" is more of a military base (which it is), where they
reassemble planes from spares (when they can), preserve others for parts, and
scrap the rest. Most of the money is made from the first two activities, and
the facility is highly profitable.

They give bus tours of the facility from the adjacent fantastic PIMA Air &
Space museum; I highly recommend visiting both when you can.

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ekianjo
How do they actually bring the planes to that location? Road transport or do
they have at least a runway?

~~~
peckrob
They fly them in, where they are officially handed over to a third party for
possibly resale, but more than likely cannibalization and the scrapping.

American Airlines retired 20 MD-80s at once last year and documented the whole
thing. [0] You can also search #Super80Sendoff on Twitter to see thoughts at
the time. [1] They sent theirs to Roswell, New Mexico I think, but it's the
same general idea.

[0] [https://airwaysmag.com/airchive/american-
retires-20-md-80/](https://airwaysmag.com/airchive/american-retires-20-md-80/)

[1]
[https://twitter.com/hashtag/Super80Sendoff](https://twitter.com/hashtag/Super80Sendoff)

~~~
billforsternz
Really enjoyed the airwaysmag.com article, thanks. The article was
meticulously put together with obvious passion for the field and the people
who work in it. Even the reading experience on mobile was pretty good which is
unusual these days. I was surprised by one or two details, including the fact
that some of these quintessential American airliners were actually
manufactured in China, as long as 25 years ago.

~~~
peckrob
> I was surprised by one or two details, including the fact that some of these
> quintessential American airliners were actually manufactured in China, as
> long as 25 years ago.

It's rumored in aviation circles that COMAC secretly reused the MD-80 jigs and
tooling to develop the ARJ21 [0], which bears a _strong_ resemblance to the
DC-9/MD-80 series jets.

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comac_ARJ21](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comac_ARJ21)

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saagarjha
Is this where Mythbusters did their "explosive decompression" episode?

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dundercoder
I used to drive past this all the time. It’s quite a sight, even from the
road.

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fla
A developed country should dismantle its planes and not let them rot in the
nature just because its easy. My two cents.

~~~
InclinedPlane
This is not a landfill it's a junkyard, there is a difference. These planes
are still valuable in several ways. They can be salvaged for parts to update
operating planes. And some of them can be returned to service, though obsolete
by modern standards. Unlike automobiles there aren't millions of any of these
planes, only hundreds or thousands. It doesn't take up that much space to keep
a bunch of obsolete planes laying around in the desert, and they may prove
valuable in the future. Reduce, reuse, recycle, and all that.

~~~
fla
I get your point, but lets be realistic for a second: These planes were not
put there for altruistic reasons. But rather because it is much cheaper to
simply forget them :)

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AuthorizedCust
Should say 2015.

~~~
Avshalom
It has been a bone yard long before 2015 and will be for long after.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
It is convention, on HN, to mention the year that articles were written (if
not the current year), whether or not the subject matter is changing rapidly.

~~~
Avshalom
It is not.

~~~
detaro
It is, the moderators even regularly edit the titles to add this where it is
missing. random example:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16128592](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16128592)

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trhway
the cross-sections always strike me with the number of parts which are
involved and thus the amount of labor to build the planes body, wings, etc.
with accompanying question of whether it can be simpler or done in other ways,
like 3d printing, robotic assembly, etc.

~~~
nradov
3D printing materials currently aren't strong enough to use as most aircraft
structural components. New aircraft designs are switching from aluminum to
carbon fiber which has to be molded and bonded in sheets (totally unsuitable
for 3D printing). Robots are already used where they make sense.

------
Overtonwindow
This may sound...whacky..but has anyone ever considered some of these
fuselages could be turned into homeless housing somewhere?

~~~
gerdesj
Nice idea but aircraft and houses are solutions to rather different problems.

Assume an aircraft is a very large cigar tube with wings, tail and wheels on
stilts. So, start by cutting off the wings and tail and seal the holes. You
need to remove the wheels and fix the thing down so that it wont blow away in
a strong wind. It is probably too long for one family, so it will need
partitioning or chopping up and the ends stoppered. You'll also need external
doors - ideally at least two per dwelling for fire safety. You can't open the
windows so those will need sorting out. You probably will want to divide up
the living/sleeping/food prep/lav areas. You need plumbing, potentially
heating and/or cooling. At least it wont rust, being aluminium. However, being
ali. means that alterations will cost a fortune. You can't put steel and ali
directly together (Galvanic) and any alterations that puncture the skin will
need very careful waterproofing.

I'd go for something like this instead:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissen_hut](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissen_hut)
They are very cheap to build and are not just for military use.

~~~
murukesh_s
Shipping containers could be another choice for temporary budget housing and
is modular.
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipping_container_architect...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shipping_container_architecture)

