In Pictures—Airports Start To Resemble Aircraft Graveyards

With airlines around the world grounding as much as 90% of their fleets, airports are reaching capacity due to the amount of parked aircraft. Pictures are emerging of some of the world’s busiest international airports that resemble some of the infamous airplane graveyards around the world.

Lufthansa have grounded the majority of their international fleet, and at Frankfurt and Munich aircraft are parked nose-to-tail across the aprons and taxiways.

Images from global aviation hubs are increasingly comparable to Victorville in California, commonly known as aircraft graveyard. The last time scenes were comparable to what we are currently seeing was after the September 11 terrorist attacks where airspace was closed globally.

Airlines parked thousands of aircraft across airports and in desert storage facilities in the Mojave desert back in 2001.

Images from Hong Kong International airport show rows upon rows of Cathay Pacific wide body aircraft lined up all across the airport. The Hong Kong airline is now starting to reinstate several routes, so it is hoped that aircraft groupings around the world will also be temporarily.

British Airways have grounded a large part of their short-haul fleet at Glasgow Airport due to space limitations at their London Heathrow hub.

Some airlines have canceled up to 90% of flights, meanwhile many smaller airlines who mostly operate international flights, such as Swiss, have canceled all flights temporarily.

South Korea, which has also been hit particularly hard by the Coronavirus outbreak has seen large fleet groundings at Seoul Gimpo Airport.