Aircraft graveyards and storage airports: where jets park, wait and disappear

They stand row after row in the desert, engines covered, windows taped over, airline logo painted out: pictures of aircraft graveyards are among the most impressive subjects in aviation. But behind the melancholy image lies a sober business. Many of these jets are just waiting for their next assignment, others supply spare parts for sister aircraft, and only some actually end up in recycling. This guide explains how boneyards and storage airports work, which sites spotters should know and where you can legally get to see retired aircraft.

Aircraft graveyard: the short answer

An aircraft graveyard – in English a boneyard – is a site where aircraft taken out of service are stored. There they are parked, preserved for a longer period, used as spare-parts donors or, at the end of their lives, dismantled and recycled. Most large facilities are in dry regions, because moisture is the biggest enemy of an idle airframe.

The term “graveyard” is therefore only half right. More precise is storage airport or storage site: for many aircraft it is a stopover, not an end point.

Four paths after landing at the boneyard

When an aircraft arrives at a storage airport, its fate is not yet decided. Roughly four categories can be distinguished:

Status	What happens	Typical occasion
Short-term storage	Aircraft is parked, moved and inspected regularly, can return quickly	Seasonal overcapacity, crisis, waiting for a new lessee
Long-term preservation	Openings are sealed, engines and sensors covered, systems preserved	Unclear future, sale or re-leasing in preparation
Spare-parts donor	In-demand components are removed bit by bit, the airframe stays put	Other aircraft of the same type need parts
Dismantling and recycling	Reusable parts out, airframe is taken apart and separated by material	Continued operation no longer pays off

How long an aircraft stays in which category depends mostly on money: lease contracts, upcoming heavy maintenance events, the value of the engines and demand for the type. An older widebody may be worth hardly anything as a whole, while its engines and landing gear are in demand on the spare-parts market.

It also matters that the longer an aircraft sits, the more costly its return becomes. It needs inspections, tests and often maintenance work before it may fly again. A stored jet is therefore not simply “parked like a car.”

Why boneyards are in the desert

Most large storage areas are in dry, rather sparsely populated areas. There are solid reasons for this:

• Low humidity: Corrosion is the main problem with aluminum airframes. Dry air slows it considerably.
• Little precipitation: Less water on and in the structure, fewer problems with seals and electronics.
• Load-bearing ground: In Tucson, for example, the ground is so hard that aircraft can be moved and parked even without paved areas. That saves enormous costs.
• Space: Storage areas need a great deal of room, and it is cheaper away from the big hubs.

At the AMARG in Tucson, besides the dry climate and the alkaline soil, the elevation of around 780 meters is also cited as a reason for the site.

The best-known sites

USA: AMARG in Tucson

The boneyard par excellence is the 309th Aerospace Maintenance and Regeneration Group (AMARG) next to Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona. Aircraft have been parked on the site since the mid-1940s, originally mainly bombers and transports from World War II. Today the unit manages several thousand military aircraft on around 2,600 acres; the exact number fluctuates, with sources citing between just under 4,000 and around 5,000.

The AMARG is not a pure scrapyard. Its mission includes preserving aircraft for possible reactivation, supplying the forces with removed parts and carrying out repair work. The site is military and closed to visitors without authorization. The neighboring Pima Air & Space Museum shows hundreds of historic aircraft on a large outdoor area and has offered bus tours through the boneyard in the past. Whether these tours currently run and what requirements apply is best checked directly with the museum before a trip.

USA: civilian storage sites

For airliners there are several well-known sites in the southwestern US, including the Mojave Air and Space Port in California, the Southern California Logistics Airport in Victorville, the Pinal Airpark in Arizona and the Roswell International Air Center in New Mexico. Numerous Boeing, Airbus and McDonnell Douglas jets stand at Mojave; some are dismantled, others overhauled and sent back into service. Victorville and Roswell took in hundreds of parked airliners in 2020. Qantas, for instance, parked its A380s in Victorville at the time.

Spain: Teruel

Teruel Airport in Aragon is Europe’s best-known storage airport. It was built on a former military site and approved for civil operation in 2013. There are no scheduled services there, but storage, maintenance and dismantling instead. The main user is Tarmac Aerosave, which operates there on around 340 hectares. During the pandemic, around 100 aircraft stood in Teruel at the same time. With its dry highland climate, the site is the European counterpart to the US desert sites.

France: Tarbes and Toulouse-Francazal

Tarmac Aerosave belongs to Airbus, Safran Aircraft Engines and Suez and has its historic site at Tarbes-Lourdes-Pyrénées airport. The first aircraft arrived there in 2009, the 500th in 2017 – the same year as the first Airbus A380. Since the end of 2017 the company has also used Toulouse-Francazal, mainly for narrowbody and regional aircraft. The offering ranges from storage and maintenance through conversion for new operators to recycling. Châteauroux is often named as another French site for long-term storage.

Netherlands: Twente

Closest for spotters from Germany is Enschede Airport Twente. There are no scheduled passenger flights there anymore, but a dismantling operation has settled there since 2017. The first aircraft scrapped there was an Airbus A340-300 from Switzerland, followed later by aircraft from KLM, Air France and others. In 2020, six Boeing 747-400s from Lufthansa came to Twente for storage.

Australia: Alice Springs

In Australia’s red center, Asia Pacific Aircraft Storage has operated a storage site at Alice Springs Airport since 2014 – the first large boneyard outside the US. At the height of the pandemic, 152 aircraft stood there, including A380s. The last aircraft from the pandemic period, a Cathay Pacific aircraft, returned to service in June 2024.

2020: when whole fleets stood on the ground

The pandemic showed how quickly storage space becomes scarce. In April 2020, well over ten thousand airliners stood on the ground worldwide at the same time. Specialist sites were no longer enough, so hubs themselves became parking lots: at Frankfurt Airport, Lufthansa used closed runways and taxiways as storage space, and it went similarly in Atlanta, for example.

The crisis also accelerated retirements. In 2020 Lufthansa retired parts of its A380, A340 and 747 fleet early; six of the former 14 A380s went back to Airbus. Later, however, the airline brought some of the A380s out of storage again and returned them to scheduled service – a good example that “stored” doesn’t mean “scrapped.” You will find more on the Lufthansa fleet in the profile of the Lufthansa Group, and on the history of the Jumbo in the article History of the Boeing 747.

What happens during dismantling

When an aircraft goes into dismantling, an orderly process follows. The goal is to salvage as much value as possible and separate the rest cleanly.

Industry associations such as the Aircraft Fleet Recycling Association (AFRA) have developed best-practice guidelines and an accreditation program for recycling operations. For modern types with a high share of carbon-fiber composite, such as the Airbus A350 or the Boeing 787, recycling the structure is considerably more demanding than with classic aluminum airframes.

What you can see as a spotter

An aircraft graveyard is not a spotting spot in the classic sense. The sites are fenced-off security areas, and at the AMARG even military. Still, there are legal ways to experience retired aircraft.

What generally applies at the fence is summarized in Is plane spotting allowed?. For military sites like Davis-Monthan, Photographing military airbases: the rules is worth a look, and drones are a topic of their own around airfields anyway – see Drones at airports.

Catching the last flights

The most realistic chance for spotters in Germany is the moment before an aircraft disappears. Ferry flights to storage sites show up in flight tracking services, usually recognizable by unusual destinations such as Teruel, Tarbes or Twente. How to find such flights is shown in the guide Flight tracking with ADS-B for spotters. The registration is your most important anchor here – some aircraft even change country and registration after storage. How to read registrations is explained in Understanding aircraft registrations.

Types that are just disappearing from fleets are often the most sought-after subjects. Depending on the region, these include older four-engine jets such as the A340-300, the Boeing 747-400 or freighters such as the MD-11. You will find tips for hunting rarities in Spotting rare aircraft.

Museums as legal boneyards

If you want to see retired aircraft up close at your leisure, a museum is the best place. In the German-speaking region, the Technik Museum Speyer, the Flugausstellung Hermeskeil, the Flugwerft Schleißheim and the Dornier Museum Friedrichshafen, among others, show historic airliners and military aircraft. Many of these exhibits would otherwise have gone the way of dismantling themselves.

What matters

• Check the status instead of speculating. An aircraft in Teruel is not automatically scrapped. Many return with a new operator.
• Confirm tours beforehand. Tours like the one in Tucson depend on the security situation and the operator and can be suspended.
• Respect public areas. Even at civilian storage sites, fences, no-entry signs and the operator’s house rules apply.
• Plan for heat and distance. In desert regions you cover long distances, and water and sun protection belong in your bag. For the photo side, long focal lengths help, see Lens and focal length for plane spotting.
• Document your sightings. When a type disappears, every photo with a registration and date becomes valuable. How to keep a logbook is covered in Documenting sightings.

Conclusion

Aircraft graveyards are less graveyard than warehouse, workshop and spare-parts source. A dry climate makes places like Tucson, Teruel or Alice Springs ideal, and in Europe Tarbes, Toulouse-Francazal and Twente are important addresses. For spotters, the site itself usually stays closed. The best chances lie with the last flights at the home airport, with ferry flights and in museums, where retired aircraft get a second career.