You've seen where airplanes go to die, but what happens to the airports we abandon? They slowly fall to pieces, like the ones in this gallery, looking like sad monuments to a future that never happened.
Nicosia International Airport, Nicosia, Cyprus, used between 1939 and the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974. The site is now partly used as the headquarters of the United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus.
There is still a Hawker Siddeley Trident 2E, damaged by the Turkish air force whilst evacuating civilians forty years ago.
(via Wikimedia Commons)
Yasser Arafat International Airport, formerly Gaza International Airport, between Rafah and Dahaniya, in the Gaza Strip. It was opened in 1998, closed in 2001 after the control tower and the radar station were bombed by Israel Defense Forces. Some bulldozers cut the runway apart in January 2002, but the ticket counters and baggage areas were still manned until 2006.
In 2010 hundreds of Palestinians started to digging and taking away the tarmac to sell as construction material.
(Photo by Abid Katib/Getty Images, Adel Hana/AP and Eyad Baba/AP)
Ciudad Real Central Airport (also known as the Don Quijote Airport), south of Ciudad Real, Spain. It was the first international private airport in Spain, cost about $1.5 billion to build, operated only for two years between 2009 and 2011.
The visitor's centre of the airport, without its copper cladding:
By the way, it had a quite cool ad before its completion:
(Photos by Oli Scarff/Getty Images)
Castellón-Costa Azahar Airport, Villanova d' Alcolea and Benlloch, Spain. It was built at a cost of $230 million, declared open in March 2011, but no plane has ever landed or taken off here.
(via Revolutionizing Awareness and Arjan Veen)
Objekat 505, or the Željava Airbase, one of the largest underground airports in Europe, on the border between Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, constructed between 1948 and 1968. It was designed to sustain a hit from a 20 kt nuclear bomb.
It was used until 1991, when the Yugoslav People's Army detonated some small bombs to destroy the runway and the Military of Serbian Krajina exploded 56 tons of explosives there to prevent any further use of the complex by opposing forces.
(via Wikimedia Commons and kruno)
Robert Mueller Municipal Airport, Austin, Texas, operated between 1930 and 1999. A development plan was approved in 2007, and now the Mueller Community is under construction.
The business side and a kitchenette area on the top floor of the control tower:
(via Matthew Rutledge)
Ellinikon International Airport, built in 1938, used until 2001, when a new airport was built for the 2004 Olympic Games.
(Photos by Milos Bicanski/Getty Images)
Dozens of old aircraft in an abandoned airfield, somewhere in the Crimea
(via Russos)