Visit to Mojave Air and Space Port and Victorville Airport in the high desert of California. During Covid-19, and apparently with limited sources of entertainment, we visited the two largest “boneyard” airports in California. To see billions of dollars’ worth of beautiful planes dressed up in their carrier’s design sitting idle in a desert is a fascinating and eerie sight. These are large landing and storage airports where planes can be temporarily parked when not in use. Some are parked permanently and stripped of parts.
This parts business is very large in the U.S., with a couple publicly-listed companies involved in the dismantling, rehabilitating, storage and sales of parts. It was particularly interesting to visit at this time since much of the world’s fleets have been partially grounded. Airlines also took the opportunity to permanently ground some of their larger and more costly planes. Sadly, this has resulted in most of the passenger Boeing 747s and Airbus 380s being put out to pasture. This solidifies the trend of smaller planes, running more frequently from point to point, rather than the less frequent hub-and-spoke model.