Drive north on Highway 58 into town and the airport announces itself before the sign does. A Convair 990 Coronado sits near the entrance, the only Convair 990 still on display anywhere in the United States, parked alongside a McDonnell Douglas QF-4 Phantom II and a SAAB TF-35 Draken. These aren't decorations. They're retired test aircraft that did real work here, and they've been greeting people at the gate for years. If you live in Mojave, you've probably stopped noticing them. That's the point of this piece: to notice something else instead.
Ask most residents what happens on the third Saturday of the month and you'll hear some version of "that's when they open up the boneyard." It's a reasonable guess. Mojave is famous for its rows of retired airliners baking in the desert sun, and the third Saturday is the one day locals associate with getting close to the airport's guarded side. But that assumption is wrong, and knowing why changes how you'd actually plan around it.
What Third Saturday Actually Opens
The event is called Plane Crazy Saturday, organized by the Mojave Transportation Museum Foundation and held from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on the third Saturday of every month. What opens that day is the transient ramp under the old control tower, the area where visiting aircraft park. It is not the boneyard. The Mojave Air and Space Port's own visitor information is clear that the storage and reclamation area where retired airliners sit is a separate, restricted zone that stays off-limits regardless of what day it is.
What you're actually watching on Plane Crazy Saturday are the aircraft that fly in or drive in for the occasion. Past events have drawn everything from a Piper J-3 Cub to a Dassault/Dornier Alpha Jet, a French-German light attack trainer that looks nothing like the Cessnas usually parked nearby. Pilots bring in whatever they're flying that's old enough or unusual enough to be worth showing off, and the lineup changes every month depending on who shows up.
At 11 a.m. there's typically a guest speaker in the MASP Board Room inside the administration building. Past speakers have included Dr. David G. Smith, who became CEO of the Mojave Air and Space Port in July 2024 and oversees a flight research center spanning more than 3,300 acres, and Kenneth "Razor" Shick, an instructor at the National Test Pilot School who has spoken about the school's history at Edwards Air Force Base. Seating is limited and reservations go through the museum's email. Cathy Hansen, president of the Mojave Transportation Museum Foundation, has run the event for years and treats it as much as a community gathering as an aviation showcase.
None of that is the boneyard. If you've been telling out-of-town family to save their questions about the retired 747s for the third Saturday, you've been sending them to the wrong part of the property.
Where The Boneyard Actually Lives
The storage area sits across the airfield from the transient ramp, and it stays visible from a handful of fixed points on public roads any day of the week, not just the third Saturday. The airport's own driving tour identifies the best vantage as Interest Point 4, near gate A15 on Flight Systems Drive, where you can see Boeing, Airbus, McDonnell Douglas and Lockheed airframes parked in various states of use. Parking isn't allowed at that gate, so it's a drive-by view rather than a place to linger. A second option locals use is the area near the Kern County Animal Shelter in Mojave, which also gives a clear line to the Stratolaunch hangar and the Virgin Galactic hangar where The Spaceship Company develops its vehicles.
If you want to photograph inside the boneyard itself, that requires email approval from Business Class Aviation, the company that leases the storage lot. Most people never bother and just shoot from the fence line instead, which is legal and doesn't require anyone's permission.
Here's the part that actually matters for timing: weekdays tend to offer better odds for catching active flight testing, since that's when the airport's more than 60 aerospace and flight-test tenants, including the National Test Pilot School, Virgin Galactic, BAE Systems and Scaled Composites, are running operations. The third Saturday is quieter on the runway and busier on the ramp. Two different experiences, two different days, and conflating them means missing both.
| Third Saturday (Plane Crazy Saturday) | Any Weekday | |
|---|---|---|
| What's open | Transient ramp under the old tower | Public roads and gate viewpoints only |
| What you see | Visiting historic and vintage aircraft | Boneyard airframes and active flight testing |
| Access | Free, 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., RSVP for the speaker talk | No RSVP, no set hours, view from Gate A15 or the animal shelter area |
| Best for | Aviation history, meeting pilots, kids who want to get close to a cockpit | Spotting the stored airliners, catching test flights in progress |
The Heat Changes The Math This Month
None of this happens in comfortable weather in August. As of today, the National Weather Service has an Extreme Heat Warning in effect for the Mojave Desert zone through 8 p.m. tonight, the second such warning this month after one that ran from August 4 through August 5. AccuWeather's monthly outlook puts August 2026 highs in Mojave ranging from 93 to 103 degrees, with an average high of 98. Several days this month have already pushed past 105.
Plane Crazy Saturday runs 10 a.m. to 2 p.m., which is exactly the window when desert heat stacks up fastest. There's no shade structure covering the ramp itself, and the aircraft on display sit on open asphalt that radiates heat back at you. Locals who've done this for years tend to show up close to 10, catch the aircraft while they're still arriving and the crowd is thin, and then retreat before the 1 p.m. mark when the pavement really starts working against you.
The Voyager Restaurant, inside the same administration building, has a small terrace that looks straight onto the apron. It's open Monday through Saturday for breakfast and lunch, with a menu that leans into the location. The Long-EZ is two eggs served any style, named for a Burt Rutan-designed aircraft that first flew from this same airfield. The Blackbird is sausage patties and eggs, and the SpaceShipOne plate is ham and eggs. It's not a gimmick so much as a running joke the restaurant has kept up for years, and it doubles as the easiest way to keep watching the ramp without standing in direct sun for four hours straight.
What's Actually Worth The Trip
None of this is a reason to skip August 15. The gate guardians will still be there, sun or no sun, and Legacy Park still holds a full-size replica of SpaceShipOne, the first privately funded spacecraft to reach the edge of space back in 2004, along with the unfinished Roton Atmospheric Test Vehicle from the late 1990s, a reminder that not every ambitious idea here made it off the ground. The point isn't to avoid the heat entirely. It's to stop treating the third Saturday as your one shot at the boneyard, because it never was that, and to plan your hour outside instead of your whole afternoon.
If you're the kind of Mojave resident who already has this on your calendar every month, you probably knew about the transient ramp and the boneyard being two different things. If you didn't, you're not alone. It's an easy thing to get backwards in a town where the airport is the town's whole personality, and the confusion doesn't cost you anything except a slightly worse plan for the day.
Mojave runs on this kind of specificity. Knowing which gate to park near, which restaurant has the terrace, which day actually opens what, is the difference between a good afternoon and a hot, disappointing one.
If you've lived here long enough to have your own Plane Crazy Saturday routine and you're ever curious what that kind of local knowledge is worth when it comes to your house, Momentum Real Estate Group offers a free home valuation whenever you want one, no obligation attached.
