I’ve heard of people ‘walking away’ from houses they could neither afford nor sell, but how about one of the biggest planes on the face of the Earth? The classic housing example is Houston in the mid 1980s. From 1981 to 1986 the price of crude oil fell by two-thirds and Houston was at the epicenter of the economic fallout. The Houston Chronicle reports that one out of every seven people in Houston lost their job during this period. People could not pay their mortgages and there were no buyers either. Some folks had no choice but to walk away from their homes.

So aside from the fact that the oil industry appears to be playing a disturbing version of Back to the Future, there are three Boeing 747-200Fs sitting on the ramp at Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur International Airport that appear to have an AWOL owner. Although the abandoned airplanes have been sitting at the airport for more than a year, the public’s attention was grabbed when Malaysian aviation officials yesterday placed a notice in the local newspaper (The Star) informing the owners that if they don’t claim their aircraft (and pay overdue parking fees) within two weeks, the aircraft will be auctioned off.

Reports on the situation have been provided by Bloomberg, CNN, Fox, and ZeroHedge. It is highly likely the owner of the three cargo aircraft (the ‘F’ in 747-200F stands for ‘freighter’) cannot afford the ‘mortgage’ and also cannot find a buyer. Although the aircraft look perfectly fine from the pictures, what is not apparent to the casual observer is the fact that the 200Fs went out of production almost 25 years ago and their low fuel efficiency (relative to the current version 747-400s and the brand new 747-8) makes them exceedingly unattractive. The website AxleGeeks indicates the 747-200F is 40% more expensive to operate than the average wide-body commercial plane in service today.

On the other hand, with oil prices currently falling off a cliff, potential buyers may be more interested in picking up a cheap 747 (a few tens of millions of dollars counts as ‘cheap’ compared to $300+ million for a brand new one) and eating the higher operating cost.

Of course, maybe the real point of Malaysia’s newspaper ad was to get the attention of the holder of the mortgage. With all the international press coverage, that mission has undoubtedly been accomplished.