Both ANA and JAL are planning sightseeing tours…aviation fans are drooling! Airplane Graveyard” is very popular among Japanese tourists!

More than 100 planes are lined up in a row in a vast desert area. Such an unusual sight can be seen at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California, USA.

Of course, this is no ordinary airport. It is a place where retired aircraft from all over the world gather, and is also known as the “airplane graveyard. Some aircraft are sold as used aircraft, but the majority are dismantled and recycled, hence the name.

Kumiko Kato, an automotive journalist who visited the site in early November, said, “This airport is about two times the size of Tokyo Dome.

Kumiko Kato, an automotive journalist who visited the site in early November, said, “The airport boasts a vast site, about 285 times the size of the Tokyo Dome (about 1,300 hectares). Located on the edge of the Mojave Desert, it receives only 70 to 100 mm of precipitation annually, making it ideal for preserving aircraft.
We visited the site two years ago, and found that the number of jumbo jets had increased since then. Perhaps due to the decrease in the number of passengers due to the COVID-19 crisis, I saw many A380s, which are the largest aircraft in the world and boast the largest number of seats. Also, the number of Japan Airlines aircraft was on the rise.

This “graveyard of airplanes” is now attracting the keen interest of Japanese airlines. Japan Airlines offered a tour including a sightseeing tour of Mojave Airport in May this year, which was sold out due to the large number of applicants, and a similar tour is planned for December, but the number of applicants was so large that a lottery was held. ANA is also planning a tour in March next year. The cost is not cheap, about 550,000 yen for four days and two nights, but the tour is said to be well received.

The tour will include guided tours of restricted areas and sales of processed parts from decommissioned aircraft. We have only been accepting applications for the tour for a short time, but we have been able to fill the 50 places available. Twenty-two of our aircraft have been delivered to Mojave Airport so far. With that background, we are well known to core aviation fans in Japan. With this tour, we aim to deepen ANA’s fan base and attract new customers,” said a representative from ANA’s Public Relations Department.

The city has always been famous in the U.S. as a sacred place for movies and TV dramas. For this reason, tours have been conducted on a regular basis.

It is not far from Hollywood and has been used as a filming location for such classics as “Die Hard 2” and “24. It is also home to an automobile manufacturer’s testing facility, the home port of a spaceship, and an airplane test pilot training school. If retired airplanes can create new value as a tourist resource, I think that is a very good thing,” said Kato.

Many retired airplanes still give people a sense of romance.

From the December 1, 2023 issue of FRIDAY