Man who knows nothing about planes stumbles upon Florida boneyard with some of the wildest retired aircraft

Imagine stumbling upon a plane graveyard – this one is probably in Florida – with jets and all kinds of aircraft that were once worth a fortune and are now just rotting away.

This YouTuber apparently did exactly that.

Unfortunately, he claims he doesn’t really know much about planes, and so his explanations throughout the video were a little lacking.

Fortunately, one of the cool things about planes is that you don’t need to be an expert to find out more about them, thanks to one simple trick.

DISCOVER SBX CARS: The global premium car auction platform powered by Supercar Blondie

The plane’s tail number is your friend

Aviation is a heavily standardized industry, which means it’s predictable.

But it also means a large part of what happens in the industry is public record.

That’s why there are people who are able to keep track of high-profile jets because the celebrities who own them have a very difficult time doing something concrete about it.

BobbyBeltz, the YouTuber who filmed this video, which may or may not be in Florida, doesn’t know about aircraft, but he does know that the tail number tells you nearly everything you need to know about a plane’s history.

One of the planes in the video, for example, is an ex-Air Algérie aircraft that hasn’t flown in a very long time.

Interestingly, using the same exact process, we also learned that Air Algérie has apparently ‘recycled’ the tail number, and is now using it for a new aircraft.

This is where aircraft are left to rot

America is home to some super-sized aircraft boneyards, including one at the Roswell International Air Center in New Mexico.

And there’s an old airport in North Carolina that’s home to an apocalyptic aircraft boneyard.

However, when it comes to sheer size, the sprawling Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Arizona is the winner.

The base is the resting place of at least 3,000 aircraft, many of which are actually not entirely abandoned.

Davis-Monthan Air Force Base employs a team of 800 mechanics who are on hand to repair, restore, and maintain many of them. 

Why? That’s a good question.

The short answer is ‘efficiency’.

Dismantling them altogether would cost more outright, and it would actually be an even more financially unwise decision in hindsight.

Old planes are regularly ‘cannibalized’ for parts, and scrapping everything upfront would force expensive new manufacturing instead of reusing existing, high-quality parts.