We Find Every Qantas 747 in a Boneyard

Australian Aviation takes on the impossible mission to locate the flag carrier’s retired Queen of the Skies after they headed for undignified burials

IN MAY this year, Australian Aviation’s website published a story that become the biggest in our history, attracting a mind-boggling 80,000 views. It involved a TikTok user, Ashley Hall, who obtained footage from inside a Qantas 747 stored inside a boneyard in the Californian desert. What she likely didn’t realise – that we were able to deduce from some nifty FlightAware research – was that the 747-400 in question had been sweltering in the desert, innards intact, for more than eight years.

Perhaps the reason the story did so well, I think now, was because aviation enthusiasts have a propensity to see what others consider as simply hulks of metal as something a bit more alive. Much like the Toys in Toy Story – who knows what they get up to when we’re not watching?