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In fading afternoon sunlight, after the mid-day heat of the arid Sonoran desert are the remains of TWA Boeing 747s and McDonnell Douglas DC-10 airliners which sit as if in a take-off queue at the storage facility at Mojave airport, California. Here, the fate of the world’s retired civil airliners is decided by age or a cooling economy and are either cannibalised for still-working parts or recycled for scrap, their aluminium fuselages worth more than their sum total. After a lifetime of safe commercial flight, wings are clipped and cockpits sliced apart by huge guillotines, cutting through their once-magnificent engineering. Picture from the 'Plane Pictures' project, a celebration of aviation aesthetics and flying culture, 100 years after the Wright brothers first 12 seconds/120 feet powered flight at Kitty Hawk, 1903.

Filename
mojave_jets02-15-08-1998.jpg
Copyright
Richard Baker
Image Size
3045x1969 / 318.7KB
http://www.bakerpictures.com
Contained in galleries
Richard Baker - All pics
In fading afternoon sunlight, after the mid-day heat of the arid Sonoran desert are the remains of TWA Boeing 747s and McDonnell Douglas DC-10 airliners which sit as if in a take-off queue at the storage facility at Mojave airport, California. Here, the fate of the world’s retired civil airliners is decided by age or a cooling economy and are either cannibalised for still-working parts or recycled for scrap, their aluminium fuselages worth more than their sum total. After a lifetime of safe commercial flight, wings are clipped and cockpits sliced apart by huge guillotines, cutting through their once-magnificent engineering. Picture from the 'Plane Pictures' project, a celebration of aviation aesthetics and flying culture, 100 years after the Wright brothers first 12 seconds/120 feet powered flight at Kitty Hawk, 1903.
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