Luc Rongier -
4 weeks ago In summary
• Lufthansa stored six 747s at Twente Airport during the Covid crisis• Airport rules allowed landing, but not normal takeoff by 747s
• A special exemption freed them; three flew again, three were scrapped
At the height of the Covid crisis, Lufthansa sent six Boeing 747-400s to a small Dutch airport for long-term storage. There was just one problem: under the airport’s operating certificate, the jumbo jets were allowed to land there, but they were not technically allowed to leave.
It sounds like an aviation myth, but it really happened.
Between June and July 2020, Lufthansa parked six 747-400s at Twente Airport near Enschede in the Netherlands as the pandemic brought international air travel to a near standstill. The aircraft involved were D-ABTK, D-ABTL, D-ABVO, D-ABVP, D-ABVS and D-ABVX.
Like airlines around the world, Lufthansa was desperately looking for places to store aircraft it no longer needed. Twente appeared to be a logical choice. The former military airport had plenty of space and could physically accommodate large aircraft.
Getting the 747s in was not the problem. Getting them back out turned into a regulatory nightmare.
The Boeing 747s were perfectly capable of taking off, but the airport’s paperwork said otherwise
The issue centered on Twente Airport’s safety certification.
The airport was authorized to receive large “Code E” aircraft such as the Boeing 747 under specific circumstances, including storage or end-of-life operations. But the wording of its certificate did not cover normal departures by those same aircraft.
That created an extraordinary situation: six fully flyable Lufthansa jumbo jets were sitting at an airport where Dutch regulators said they could not legally take off.
The dispute was not about whether Twente’s runway was long enough. Instead, regulators pointed to infrastructure requirements including reinforced runway and taxiway shoulders and the absence of runway turn pads designed to allow very large aircraft to turn around safely at the end of the runway.
Twente argued that the aircraft could be moved with towing equipment rather than making the maneuver under their own power, and maintained that safety had never been compromised. The Dutch aviation regulator disagreed, saying the airport did not meet all the requirements necessary for normal 747 departures.
The argument became serious enough that the two sides were preparing to take the matter to court.
The dispute nearly went before a judge before regulators found a way to let the jets escape
A court hearing was scheduled for October 29, 2020, but an agreement was reached shortly before the case was due to be heard.
Dutch authorities granted a one-time exemption allowing all six Lufthansa 747s to leave Twente under special conditions.
The aircraft had to be kept as light as possible for departure, which meant carrying relatively small amounts of fuel. Other operational precautions were also imposed to satisfy regulators.
The first 747 to escape the unusual aviation limbo was D-ABVP, which departed Twente on November 3, 2020.
But the six aircraft did not all leave immediately. Their departures were spread over almost a year, with D-ABTL finally becoming the last of the group to leave Twente on September 20, 2021.
The episode became one of the strangest examples of how pandemic-era aircraft storage collided with aviation regulation. Lufthansa had not parked broken aircraft at an unsuitable airfield. It had parked airworthy jets at an airport that was physically capable of handling them, only to discover that the regulatory framework for their departure was not in place.
Three of the 747s that looked destined for retirement ended up flying for Lufthansa again
There was another twist.
When the six 747s arrived at Twente in 2020, the aviation industry was facing its worst crisis in decades. At the time, it seemed entirely possible that many older four-engine aircraft would never carry passengers again.
That happened to half of the group. D-ABVO, D-ABVP and D-ABVS eventually traveled to the United States for retirement and dismantling.
The other three had a very different fate.
D-ABTK, D-ABTL and D-ABVX returned to Lufthansa’s active fleet and were still flying for the German carrier years after the pandemic storage crisis. By 2026, all three could still be seen operating for Lufthansa, giving them an unexpected second life after appearing to be on the way out in 2020.
That makes the Twente story even more remarkable in hindsight.
Six Boeing 747s arrived during a global aviation collapse. They became temporarily trapped by airport regulations, needed a special exemption just to leave, and then split into two very different futures.
Three went to the scrapyard.
Three went back to carrying passengers.
And for a brief period, one of aviation’s most iconic aircraft found itself in the strangest possible predicament: perfectly capable of flying, but legally unable to take off.
