But for "real hardcore airplane nerds" the Boneyard remains a bucket-list destination, a chance to view mile after mile of ghost planes, cocooned as if by some aircraft-eating spider, while a tour guide calls out the names and service histories of the various jet fighters, tankers, cargo planes, helicopters, and bombers.įor such tourists - and Scott counts himself one of them - the Boneyard is, "one of the most amazing aerospace spectacles in the world." For everyone else, the museum - which has 80 outdoor acres of old aircraft that visitors can actually touch - is probably more satisfying. Tour-goers need to make their reservations at least ten business days in advance, and must bring along all of their supporting IDs and documents, or they don't get on the bus.Īll of this, Scott said, dampens the appeal of the Boneyard for the average visitor. Satellite images featuring grounded Air New Zealand. The bus does not stop and its passengers do not get out until they return to the museum. Air New Zealand 777s have been spotted in a US desert storage facility, surrounded by a sea of planes grounded due to the coronavirus pandemic. The tour lasts 90 minutes, narrated by a museum guide. military planes are stored in the largest airplane boneyard in the world, operated by the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration. Today, the public can only view the Boneyard through the windows of a tour bus that leaves the museum twice a day, Monday through Friday. Any old, historic aircraft have long-ago been hauled to the Pima Air & Space Museum across the street.Ĭ-130 military transports, sealed to keep out dust and desert critters.Īccording to museum executive director Scott Marchand, the last time that civilians were able to freely wander the Boneyard was the early 1970s. Crews are constantly at work either sealing new arrivals against the elements, disassembling other planes for parts, or trucking gutted aircraft to an on-site smelter. Although the popular image is of an Elephant Graveyard of airplanes, with rusty propellers creaking in the wind, the Boneyard is actually a busy place. The Boneyard is on Davis-Monthan Air Force Base and is run by the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (AMARG) - which doesn't like the name "Boneyard" (The preferred name is "Air Power Reservoir"). The answer to all of these questions is No. Do squatters live in the airplanes? Can the desert heat make aircraft explode? Could Zeppelins, biplanes, or flying saucers be half-buried and forgotten in a back corner? Can a visitor simply hop into a jet, turn a key, and fire it up?Īttack choppers are cocooned against the desert sun. It's open for public tours, and inspires all manner of fever-dream conjecturing. The Aircraft Boneyard outside of Tucson is a legendary roadside destination: over 4,000 mothballed aircraft baking in the sun, stretched across four square miles of Arizona desert. It's a lesson that could save lives in the future-and teach others to save even more.Some of the Boneyard's 4,000 aircraft. The plane stalled, and hit the ground nose first. The hotel owns a section of land which borders the airport that is overgrown and littered with long-grounded planes. Just a few hundred metres away from London Southend Airport is the Skylark Hotel, along Aviation Way. “Because that’s been jammed in place, that’s probably where it was set at the time,” he says.Īdding in weather reports from the night of the crash and intel from nearby pilots, Anthony concludes the wings iced up. A graveyard of abandoned planes lies hidden away between an Essex hotel and an airport. Anthony highlights the flap lever with his flashlight. The crash shunted the MU-2's entire instrument panel and flight controls hard to the left. If there’s a fire, he’ll make them look at whether smoke trails go straight up, meaning it probably started when the plane was stationary, or if they flow in the direction of travel, indicating the flames started mid-air. So Anthony will teach his students to look at everything, down to the odd patches of color that could be paint transfer from another aircraft, or even a building. “But how we’re going to prevent the accident from happening in the future.” “The bottom line is not so much the cause of the accident, although it’s important,” says Feith. It's engine failure in a thunderstorm, at night, with the pilot was trying to land at an unfamiliar airport, with a short runway, without full training on emergency procedures for that aircraft. Today's commercial aircraft are so safe, it usually takes an array of interconnected issues to cause a crash. “It’s up to the investigator to take that data and try to put it into a sequence of events,” Feith says. The critical thing is to teach investigators to build up a big picture, rather than zero in on one source of information, even a black box. The approach is the same for studying downed airliners, says Gregory Feith, a former investigator with the National Transportation Safety Board.
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