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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.

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Filename: mojave_jets02-15-08-1998.jpg
Copyright: Richard Baker
Image Size: 4096x2649 / 977.1KB; http://www.bakerpictures.com; transcontinental USA mid-day blue sky civil airliner jet aircraft jet trade international airbus Boeing commercial aviation remains scrub dust industrial fate forgotten Sonora desert heat relics dump retired junk scrap yard dead end equipment fuselage air frame parts end of service re-usable recycle scrap aluminium metallic facility California Mojave desert arid worthless old decline terminated era historic bygone past technology airliners commercial storage lifeless useless redundant ruins boneyard graveyard airline aeronautics jet airliner aircraft plane aeroplane aircraft aviation flight plane planes transport transportation landscape 747 jumbo jets transporting airlines airfield airport abandoned relic raised hulk undignified wasteland old-age derelict condition climate lines TWA
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.