A morbid-looking aircraft boneyard in Thailand is drawing visitors and sparking speculation.
Thailand’s winding side streets hold many mysteries. So maybe we shouldn’t be so surprised by the latest revelation from the city of sois: the creepy-looking storage site for aircraft, where two private jets with a combined value of AU$122.8 million were dumped.
The jet graveyard has now turned into a tourist attraction, with hundreds of visitors reportedly being keen to pay 300 baht ($12 AUD) to go and see the rotting planes.
The two planes were formerly operated by Orient Thai Airlines, and after being dumped, a businessman intended to turn them into outdoor bars. The plan was scrapped after he ran out of funds.
Photographer Dax Ward, who visited the site previously, told The Sun, “The project was a fiasco and the foreign investor left the site as it is.”
“As far as I know, there are currently no plans to move them, although the land upon which they rest is quite expensive.”
He added: “It is very eerie in the graveyard.”
The planes appear to have been there for some time. Coconuts reported in 2014: “Today the interiors of the planes have been stripped, but the carpeting, overhead bins, and bathrooms are still intact. Oxygen masks, safety manuals and other bits are scattered around the area, almost as if the planes had crashed there.”
Also according to Coconuts, it used to be a third of the price to go see them: “To catch a glimpse of this unexpected sight, head to Ramkhamhaeng Road Soi 101 and continue for roughly 100 meters,” Coconuts wrote in 2014. “The lot is on the left, next to an auto body repair shop.”
“It is private property, but here’s a Coconuts pro tip: the security guard accepts 100THB (AU $4) as the price of admission.”
Coconuts
Coconuts also reports that these weren’t the first planes to appear in this boneyard, alleging that around 2010 “a pair of two Boeing 747 nose sections sat waiting to be dismantled [there].”
“Seeing these massive sections from a jumbo jet once known as the ‘Queen of the Skies’ begs the question: How did they get there? Only one 747 nose remains, accompanied by the MD-82s.”
Coconuts
Coconuts added: “The McDonnell Douglas-built MD-82 was a commercial jetliner which entered service in 1981. Since the registration numbers of the two sitting inside the Ramkamhaeng boneyard have been painted over, it’s hard to tell when these planes were operated or retired.”
“Even more mysterious is how their big bodies – the MD-82 fuselage stretches more than 40 meters long – ended up here along with so many other airplane components so far away from an airstrip.”
Coconuts
“Interestingly the same model of plane, operated by the same airline, was involved in a deadly accident some years back,” Coconuts added.
In southern Bali sits an abandoned Boeing 737. It’s not at an airport or an airplane boneyard. Instead, it sits in a field near some kind of limestone quarry, and no one quite knows how it got there. The plane has now become a tourist attraction in its own right. pic.twitter.com/mpMFhiUudM
— Atlas Obscura (@atlasobscura) March 1, 2018
This isn’t the only mysterious boneyard in the world. There is also one in Arizona, USA, where abandoned miltary jets have sparked much speculation. On top of that, there is one in southern Bali, where Atlas Obscura reports, an abandoned Boeing 737 lays at rest.
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