bykovo airport - abandoned planes
About an hour and a hour south east of Moscow are the remains of Bykovo airport. The airport first opened in 1933 with a grass airfield, in the second world war it was expanded and a brick runway was built, further expansion occurred in 1960 and 1975 by which time it served 1.5 million passengers for domestic flights per year.
In 2010 the airport was closed when its lease expired and in 2011 the terminal building was demolished, part of the grounds are used as a storage facility and the runway is still occasionally used for the cargo delivery of Soloviev D-30 turbofan plane engines which are repaired and overhauled on site.
We had planned to spend quite a time paying on the 4 planes that remain on the edge of the grounds and taking a peek of the runway but one of the planes had recently been burnt out and there was evidence of recent security patrols around the perimeter so we were not too willing to spend a lot of time in the area especially when the remains of the plane were still warm in places!
In 2010 the airport was closed when its lease expired and in 2011 the terminal building was demolished, part of the grounds are used as a storage facility and the runway is still occasionally used for the cargo delivery of Soloviev D-30 turbofan plane engines which are repaired and overhauled on site.
We had planned to spend quite a time paying on the 4 planes that remain on the edge of the grounds and taking a peek of the runway but one of the planes had recently been burnt out and there was evidence of recent security patrols around the perimeter so we were not too willing to spend a lot of time in the area especially when the remains of the plane were still warm in places!
