Over the past year, civil aviation, which has almost come to a standstill worldwide, has accelerated a development: there will be no use for more and more aircraft in the near future. They are discarded and have to be parked somewhere.
Parking on the outskirts of commercial airports is associated with high costs. In addition, space remains limited. Even decades ago, few remote airports specialized in a special service: the handling of passengers plays almost no role there. The temporary preservation of aircraft on huge open spaces, the sale of spare parts and the recycling of aircraft fuselages are part of their business model.
The aviation enthusiast Sebastian Thoma, who works as an air traffic controller and also has a pilot’s license, does not photograph, like other plane spotters, just take-off and landing machines at airports. Over the years, he has also visited the aircraft cemeteries and photographed the wing frames and partially slaughtered jets there.
Airliner Boneyards from a bird’s eye view
Thanks to his flight ticket, he chartered propeller machines in many places and was able to get an overview from the air. This gives him a unique photo documentation of the final resting places of aircraft.
He now has his photos in the book “After the last landing – The most fascinating aircraft cemeteries in the world”, published by the publisher GeraMond has appeared.
Thoma shows us not only the “Airliner Boneyards” in the US states of California and Arizona, but also in Europe, such as Teruel in Spain, or even in Germany. Hundreds of jets had to be parked at airports from Frankfurt via Finkenwerder to Rostock-Laage in 2020. Everyone has not been back in the air for a long time.
Read also:
– These are the largest airplane cemeteries in the world
– Airplanes on the desert slaughterhouse in Arizona
– Terminal station Teruel: why billions of dollars worth of parking in the Spanish province
This article contains so-called affiliate links. More information can be found here.