Ex Machina - The B747

I split the Aircraft Graveyard into two footprints to bypass the 20 photo limit. This entry focuses on the B747.

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The Aircraft Graveyard is visible from Ramkamhaeng Road. I arrived on time at 11.00am, waited until 11.15am, and proceeded without Clay when he didn't show up by then. The aircraft are fenced in, and there are several families living in some of the abandoned hulls. At the gate, I caught the attention of a young boy, who collected 200 baht from me before unlocking the gate and letting me in. Wow, what a sight. There is one Boeing 747-400 and two McDonnell Douglas MD-82s in the field. One of the MD-82s had been written off after a crash in Phuket with fatalities.

According to other websites I read, the last operator of all three aircraft was Orient Thai. They were purchased by a businessman and brought to this field to be dismantled and sold for scrap. Everything that was salvageable had been stripped out. I'm not sure what the story is about the families living in the Aircraft Graveyard and whether they have permission to live there.

Anyway, I was like a kid in a candy shop. The nose section of the B747 was relatively intact. I climbed into the B747 via a cargo door, and accessed the main deck by climbing up a ladder. The main deck was where first class would have been. The stairs to the upper deck were still intact and so I went up to where the business class cabin would have been, and peeked into the cockpit. One of the two MD-82s was also relatively intact. I climbed into it and went to the cockpit and sat in the captain's chair!

https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/airplane-gr…

https://www.travelblog.org/Asia/Thailand/Centra…Read more