Phil Derner

Like humans, aircraft meet their end through various means. Though most end up getting scrapped, a few sad examples meet a more violent end.

I shot this photo at JFK in June of 2004. Boeing 747SPs were already very rare in the world, mostly used for VIP transport at the time. This one, registered 7O-YMN, was the equivalent of Yemen’s Air Force One. I was with a group of friends and there are several images online taken from within a second of each other.

On March 19, 2015, rival forces fighting for power in Yemen clashed at Aden Airport, and this aircraft took significant damage by gunfire, ultimately being destroyed. Photos 2 and 3 show the before and after of the aircraft sitting on the Aden ramp. To clarify, the overhead images are from satellite imagery and are not my bad attempt at emulating .

Boeing made 45 747SPs, and though a couple of airframes’ lives ended in accidents, this was surely the most violent. Another one (VQ-BMS) was damaged beyond repair during Hurricane Laura in August of 2020.

That time I got to sit in the left seat of a British Airways Concorde, pre-beard, pre-headshave, and before flag patch hats kicked Ralph Lauren hats out of my life.