Man finds a Boeing 747 randomly sitting in a field in Thailand and decides to unravel the mystery over why it's there

There’s an abandoned Thai Airways Boeing 747 randomly sitting in a field in Thailand, and the story behind it isn’t particularly happy.

Apparently, Thai Airways decided to ground the plane because it was becoming too expensive to run and the airline also came up with a Plan B.

It makes sense so far, but the plane has been grounded for at least three years and Plan B isn’t taking shape at all.

Ironically, both this Boeing 747 and other planes that also belong to Thai Airways might share the same fate.

This Boeing 747 is facing an uncertain fate

YouTuber Streetwise Thailand discovered an abandoned Thai Airways Boeing 747 – registration HS-TGP – located in a field in the Pran Buri province, around 120 miles south of the Bangkok.

Streetwise Thailand was able to climb inside the aircraft, explore the empty cabin and step into the cockpit.

The YouTuber also walked out onto the wing, which almost ended in disaster when one of the skin panels gave way.

This massive jet was grounded in 2020 – and later transported to the site in 2023 – because it had become far too inefficient compared to modern aircraft.

But the problem is that it was disassembled, transported to its new location and then abandoned in a field, which is always a bit dangerous because that’s guaranteed to ruin the plane very quickly.

Apparently, there’s a plan to turn this into a high-end cafe and restaurant.

But the video was shared to YouTube just days ago and, clearly, no progress is being made at all.

This isn’t the first Thai Airways plane that’s been ‘abandoned’

Thai Airways had been having a rough decade, but things got worse during the pandemic.

All of a sudden, the airline realized its fleet was way too large and inefficient.

For decades, Thai Airways was operating so many different aircraft models with different engine types simultaneously, making maintenance and training enormously expensive.

As for the 747, the plane is being phased out globally precisely because it’s a bit outdated, but Thai also had issues with Airbus A380s.

Years before the pandemic, Thai Airways bit off more than it could chew by investing in a fleet of double-decker giants.

The problem is that these giants had to be grounded immediately, first because of the pandemic, and then because the airline realized the A380s were too thirsty for fuel and too hard to fill to be profitable.

During this time, Thai Airways also underwent court-supervised ‘business rehabilitation’ – Thailand’s version of Chapter 11 – and decided to sell or write off nearly half of its fleet.

The result was pretty tragic: at least four A380s have been rotting away at an airport in Bangkok, while one of these A380s – HS-TUE – was deemed no longer airworthy, dismantled, and then reassembled as a night market, cafe, and resort in a place called Rayong, around 120 miles south of the capital, Bangkok.

While fascinating as a concept, you’d need to sell quite a few cups of coffee and bagels to make back the money the Airbus (or Boeing) had cost the company.

Still, the good news is that, unlike the 747 we talked about earlier, the A380 ‘cafe’ is already operational.