Into the Boneyard

Ever wonder what an airplane graveyard looks like? Scott McCartney, the Middle Seat columnist for The Wall Street Journal, has a great account today of one place big jets go to die (or rest, or get reborn)--the "boneyard" at the Pinal Air Park in Marana, Arizona, about 20 miles north of Tucson.

McCartney reports that the airline industry has grounded more 11 percent of its fleet at places like the Pinal Air Park, with US airlines parking 800 planes since mid-2008. The reason is simple: as the airlines have cut back on their capacity, first because of the high cost of oil and now because a bad economy that's keeping prospective passengers at home.

Some of the older planes will never fly again, and will be mined for parts. Other jets will get refurbished and sold to another airlines. Some might just fly again under the same tail markings as the airline that parked it in the first place. (For a photo essay of the boneyard, check out these images from Matt Coleman).

I got a first-hand look at the facility in the late 1970s when my dad moved my mom and I to Arizona from northern California. He had gotten a job with Evergreen International Aviation, the company that operates the maintenance facility at the Pinal Air Park. For two weeks, at the height of a desert summer, we called the park home and stayed in a western-themed motel on the grounds of the facility.

I was not happy. I'd wander around the mothballed planes, wondering what I had done to deserve being moved away out of the Bay Area just as I was starting high school. The most fun I had was exploring the rows and rows of planes with another kid whose parents were living there, in the middle of nowhere.

In time, after we moved into town, after I went to high school and college in Tucson, and after I had finally left the desert to start my career, I came to be fascinated by the boneyard. Driving north on Interstate 10 from Tucson to Phoenix, I'd look out at the planes off in the distance and wonder what it would be like to run between the jets once more.