Are these Boeing 747's yours?

This is an old story from 2015, but I thought it was so interesting, I wanted to share it with you.

Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KUL/WMKK) has seen just about everything, but nothing quite prepared it for the morning in late December 2015 when it woke up on the front pages of major newspapers around the world. But the story was too strange to ignore. Someone had forgotten not one, or two, but three Boeing 747 jumbo jets at Kuala Lumpur Airport, yes three 747's and after years of racking up millions in parking fee's the gigantic planes were sold and spectacularly transformed into a surreal Chinese classroom and a Coach handbag store.

Malaysia Airports Holdings had taken out an advert in The Star politely asking the public a question no major airport should ever have to ask. 

In plain print, beneath the photos of 3 jumbo jets, it basically said:

 If these Boeing 747s are yours, please come and get them. 

It was the aviation equivalent of a lost umbrella announcement, except the items in question each weighed more than 300 tons and had been sitting there for well over a year.

The notice addressed the “untraceable owner” of three Boeing 747-200F aircraft, identified by registrations TF-ARH (MSN 22669), TF-ARM (MSN 22363), TF-ARN (MSN 22382). It listed their exact parking bays at WMKK, provided a contact number, and offered a two-week grace period before the airport would have the right to sell or dispose of them under Malaysia’s Civil Aviation Regulations. The advert sounded oddly polite for something that essentially threatened to scrap three jumbo jets, but it was a perfectly legal step in a long-running effort to get the aircraft off the tarmac. The operator had reached the point where diplomacy had failed, and bureaucracy needed to take over.

The international reaction was immediate. It had been called the most dramatic items ever to hit “lost and found,” highlighting the absurdity of a world-class airport trying to reunite an absentee owner with three aircraft the size of small apartment buildings. The story became even stranger when you looked at the economics. These were 747-200Fs from around 1980 and 1981, a generation of four-engine freighters that had become increasingly difficult to place. By the mid-2010s, the market preferred more efficient twin-engine jets, and the once-mighty 747-200F had fallen so far in value that its scrap price often outweighed its resale potential. It has been noted that while a new 747-8F retailed for hundreds of millions of dollars, an old 747-200F might fetch a sliver of that on a good day. 

In the end, the three forgotten 747s did get claimed, just not by the people anyone expected. What began as a bizarre newspaper advert asking someone to pick up their jets ended with pieces of those aircraft scattered across Asia, reborn as classrooms, attractions, and a luxury-branded cafe. Kuala Lumpur International Airport cleared its parking bays. The world got a strange, delightful story. And three old Boeing 747s found new lives after spending one awkward year waiting for an owner who never came back.

So, where are the Jumbos now?

TF-ARH earned the most flamboyant afterlife. After being dismantled, its fuselage was moved to the Freeport A’Famosa Outlet in Melaka and transformed into a tourism and retail concept called Coach Airways. Visitors climb an airstair and wander through a 747-interior reimagined as a cafe, lounge, and shopping space. It is part airplane, part Instagram magnet, and entirely unexpected for a freighter that once spent years abandoned at WMKK.

TF-ARM traveled the farthest, ending up in Nanchang, China. There, the former freighter became an educational exhibit at Jiangxi Aviation Vocational and Technical College. Students now walk through its fuselage to learn about airframe construction, turning a forgotten WMKK parking problem into a hands-on classroom.

TF-ARN settled in Zhoushan, Zhejiang province. Once a workhorse for Air Atlanta Icelandic, it now lives on as a static attraction in Dinghai, serving training or leisure purposes depending on who you ask. It is a quiet retirement for a plane that spent its final active years shuttling cargo across continents.