Posted on 02/02/2013 2:32:31 PM PST by Pan_Yan
LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — Landing in Nigeria's largest city, one of the first thing visitors see as they peer out of their airplane's windows is the moss-covered metal carcasses of what used to fly in Africa's most populous nation.
Workers at Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos call it "the graveyard," an overgrown field filled with about a dozen cargo and passenger airplanes long since abandoned and left to rot by insolvent airlines. At least 65 abandoned airplanes, ranging from small commuter jets to one massive Boeing 747, sit at airfields across the country and serve as a haunting reminder of Nigeria's chaotic and disaster-filled aviation history.
...
For years, the planes sat, partly out of the inertia that often grips government in Nigeria, an oil-rich nation earning billions that has an ailing state-run power company that can't provide reliable supplies of electricity for the nation's more than 160 million people. But in the last few weeks, government officials decided the planes must go, partly out of security concerns as a radical Islamist sect continues to launch bloody attacks in the country.
Officials decided to offer the planes free to those who applied for them. On Thursday, workers used hammers and saws to tear apart fuselages as landing aircraft roared overhead. Seats rose up in the tall grass, as oxygen masks and paperwork littered the ground. Most of the planes appear to be heading to scrapyards.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
I see a 727, (5) 737-100-200?s and a DC-9 as far as I can identify.
No DC-9, I meant DC-8
Seven of them look to be the same (737s). I’m guessing the biggest plane (bottom right) is the DC-8?
Nigeria where everything new is old again.
They can build a brand new building there and inside of three months it looks like a slum.
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