Nigeria Starts Dismantling Its Plane 'Graveyard'

 Lagos, Nigeria, January 31, 2013

Workers have begun dismantling the abandoned airplanes left to rot at airports across Nigeria, a nation with a troubled history of crashes and mismanaged airlines.

AP

A worker looks out from the fuselage of an... View Full Caption

The work has started in Lagos at the Murtala Muhammed International Airport, where passengers coming into Africa's most populous nation have long seen the abandoned planes when landing there. Henry Omeogu, director of airport operations for the Federal Airports Authority of Nigeria, said Thursday that he hopes workers will dismantle all the aircraft within the coming weeks.

Omeogu estimated there are at least 65 abandoned planes at Nigeria's airports, ranging from small jets to a massive Boeing 747 in the northern city of Kano. The work comes as Nigeria struggles to overcome a past filled with airline disasters and corruption in the aviation sector.