DALLAS — Old, used airliner airframes still hold the charm of a mighty machine and don’t fail to impress many.
Over the years, aircraft fuselages, have made their way into ordinary life in the form of restaurants, boutique hotels, and Airbnb’s. One that remains rather fascinating is the Boeing 747, which was put into sea in Bahrain to serve as a designated diving site.
So if you really want to admire the queen of the skies in this case, you would have to dive a good 20 meters deep.
Pulling It Off
Diving is rather popular in Bahrain given its rich variety of reefs and oyster beds spanning a great deal. To add to it, DiveBahrain, the official dive park in Bahrain, decided to up the notch and place a Boeing 747 as an underwater marvel. DiveBahrain occupies an area of 100,000 square meters.
In regard to preparing the airframe responsibly to be of no harm to marine life, PADI stated in a blog, “Over the last eight months, the Boeing 747 went through an intense decontamination process, stripping out all wiring, all hydraulic, pneumatic and fuel systems, and all adhesives, insulation, plastics, rubbers, chemicals or other potential toxic substances that could be damaging to the aquatic environment it will soon call home. We learnt that they’d even gone so far as to remove every nut and bolt in the aircraft, cleaned, and then replaced them.”
Visitor Attraction News. Video by blooloop
A Brief on the Airplane’s Flying Life
According to planespotters.net, the Boeing 747-200 wore MSN 24422 with test registration N57004 and eventually made its way to Malaysia Airlines (MH), where it spent most of its time as 9M-MHJ. During this period at MH, it was converted into a freighter (B747-200F). The aircrfat wrapped up its play at Air Atlanta Icelandic under TF-AAA. The aviation spotting website also stated that the airframe was transported by ship in June 2019 to an area just off the Bharhain coast.
Featured image: DiveBahrain
