Unless you arrive in the dead of night, airports are usually teeming with tourists, business travellers and hundreds of staff members that keep the complex operations ticking over. But imagine rocking up at your local aviation centre and finding nobody there. It's an eerie thought.

Click through the gallery to discover the world's abandoned airports and the secrets behind them...

Hong Kong's former international airport is an aviation hub no more. Once a handy place to land, right in the centre of Hong Kong in the Kowloon area, it was the city's primary airport. But its lifetime was shrouded in complication and disaster. With the rapid growth of Hong Kong in the 1980s and 1990s, overcrowding in the airport became a problem and pollution for nearby residents was a huge issue.

But it wasn't just the infrastructure that became a problem for this airport. Kai Tak was notorious for its difficult landings and take-offs. Pilots had to navigate the nearby hills with a sharp turn and often gusts of wind could make planes overshoot the runway. Several aircraft had accidents while coming into land or during take-off at the airport during its 73 years of operation, including the 1993 China Airlines Boeing 747, which overshot the runway during a typhoon and crashed into Victoria Harbour.

Incredibly, there were no fatalities and only minor injuries. But the accident was one of many that led to the closure of the airport in 1998. It was replaced by a larger airport, still in use today, further away from the city's core residential areas. This meant height restrictions on buildings in Kowloon could be lifted and the city grew taller almost by the day.

Today, the old airport is being used as a cruise terminal for up to two 220,000-tonne ships a day. The terminal opened in 2013 and sees more than 730,000 passengers pass through it each year, only a fraction of the close to 30 million people that used to travel through the airport when it was here.

Serving Denver, the capital of Colorado, Stapleton International was once a major airport for the western USA. Frontier and United Airlines both operated out of the hub during its 66-year tenure, as well as now-defunct carriers such as Continental and Denver's own Rocky Mountain Airways.

With six runways and five terminals, it was a serious operation with over 1,200 employees. But it wasn't quite big enough. Stapleton was growing and the demand for air traffic was increasing, but the airport simply couldn't keep up.

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In 1995, all traffic ceased and was instead routed via Denver International Airport – the main transport hub for the state today. Now, you won't see many traces of the airport that once was.

After a storm in 1997 damaged many of the airport buildings, leaving well over 4,000 holes in the roof, the vast majority of the airport was torn down. Today, the most recognisable lasting feature is the old air traffic control tower, which is now the FlyteCo Tower: a brewery, bar, restaurant and bowling alley. The land around it has been redeveloped as a residential area.

Ciudad Real Central Airport in central Spain opened in 2008 to much fanfare but the massive infrastructure project, which cost an eye-watering £1 billion ($1.3bn), was doomed from the get-go. Stuck in the middle of nowhere, the airport's completion coincided with the global financial crisis of 2008 and resulting recession, and the hub failed to attract enough airlines to make it profitable.

Vueling, the last airline to operate scheduled flights to and from the airport, pulled out in 2011. A year later, the private airport went bankrupt and closed.

The airport, which was poised to welcome as many as 10 million passengers a year, was effectively abandoned in 2012. Its main building, single runway and nearby visitor centre have remained empty ever since.

Elsewhere in the airport, there's a partially completed walkway which was supposed to connect the airport to a train station on the Madrid-Seville high-speed rail line. Construction ceased when the airport closed. A large car park (pictured) also remains completely abandoned.

Luckily, things are looking up for the ill-fated ghost airport. After changing ownership a couple of times in the last few years and a halted attempt at rebranding as Madrid Airport South, the current owners use the space for tech support, flight training and as a storage facility for aircraft. It was used throughout the pandemic for grounded planes.

Athens' Ellinikon International Airport was originally built in 1938 and was the Greek capital's main airport for decades. It was closed in 2001 to make way for the new Athens International Airport.

The airport was partly re-purposed as a venue for the Athens Olympic Games in 2004. The northwestern section of the site was used for field hockey, baseball and more. One of the airport's hangars was even revamped to host various fencing events and basketball games.

Since the Olympics, the former airport has all been left to rack and ruin. An ambitious project to convert it into a municipal park was in the pipeline but was canned following the Greek debt crisis that pretty much bankrupted the country.

After briefly serving as a makeshift refugee camp, the site was leased to a gambling development company which intended to build a casino inside the abandoned airport. Now, the airport has been given a new lease of life as Experience Park, Europe's largest urban regeneration project.

Today, Nicosia International is trapped in a 1970s time warp but it was once the principal airport of Cyprus, welcoming hundreds of thousands of tourists a year to the island's beautiful, sun-soaked beaches. But its story also has a tinge of tragedy.

In 1974, Turkey invaded Cyprus and the country's international airport. It became the scene of fierce fighting between Turkish and Cypriot forces and was heavily bombed.

The airport was declared a United Nations Protected Area (UNPA) during the conflict and found itself within the UN-controlled buffer zone once hostilities had ceased.

Situated in a no-man's land between the Republic of Cyprus and the self-declared state of Northern Cyprus, the airport has remained largely untouched since the conflict. 

These days, the site is used as a headquarters for the UN peacekeeping force in Cyprus but much of the former terminal building and its contents still exist, including signage and seating. While the future of the airport is uncertain, plans have been floated to re-open it under UN control and even transform the site into a special tax-free industrial zone.

This lonely airstrip was once part of a planned intercontinental hub for supersonic planes and was supposed to become the world’s largest airport. Located in a remote area of South Florida, the Everglades Jetport was first launched in 1968, just before Concorde completed its first flight, and was tipped to have six runways and high-speed rail links to the surrounding cities.

However, after environmental concerns were raised in regards to supersonic aviation, the plans to build the impressive hub were abandoned. Nowadays, the lone runway, known as Dade-Collier Training and Transition Airport, is the only reminder of this once incredible project.

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Located on Brooklyn's Barren Island – a fitting name, given how desolate it looks – Floyd Bennett Field has lain abandoned since 1971. But it was once a thriving hub. Built in 1931, the airfield was named after Second World War aviator Floyd Bennett, who piloted a historic mission to the North Pole. The airport bore witness to some landmark flights, including Howard Hughes' record-breaking round-the-world trip in 1938.

Yet despite hosting some impressive aviation firsts, Floyd Bennett didn't get nearly as much commercial traffic as was hoped, partly due to competition from nearby Newark Airport. By 1937, the only operator offering connections here was American Airlines, so in 1941 the field was turned into a naval base instead. It served this role up until the early 1970s, when it was deactivated. Today, it's become a haunt for urban explorers and photographers, who come to snoop around its chilling interiors and see its graffiti-clad, crumbling buildings up close. Meanwhile, the former air control tower has been turned into the William Fitts Ryan Visitor Center (pictured), paying homage to the golden age of aviation.

Many of Tempelhof's original buildings have been left in their frozen-in-time state, so it's as eerie as they come. An airport was first built on this site in south-central Berlin in the 1920s, although the terminal that currently stands here was erected between 1936 and 1941. At its time it was considered extremely modern and was among the largest buildings of its kind in Europe. 

After its closure in 2008, Tempelhof was reclaimed by city authorities. Shortly afterwards, the airfield was transformed into the city's largest park, Tempelhofer Feld, which is populated by roller skaters, runners, dog walkers and cyclists, as well as hosting frequent festivals and events. Meanwhile, its buildings, which you can explore on a two-hour guided tour, have been repurposed in various ways: the radar tower is used by the German military to monitor air traffic, while the enormous 3.2 million square foot (300,000sqm) terminal is rented out to several occupiers, including the German police and US military. 

Dating back to the First World War, Manston Airport in southeast Kent was initially used for emergency aircraft landings, after which an aerodrome was established here in 1916. Throughout the Second World War, the base played an important role in Britain's air defence efforts. Although Manston Airport began offering commercial flights from the 1980s, it was under-used and never became financially successful, so in 2014 it closed for good. 

Since then, the site has been left deserted, despite several suggested plans to redevelop it. It has been used as a lorry park for drivers travelling between Dover and Calais and even briefly served as a movie set in the film Empire of Light, but otherwise its desolate buildings have stood as a chilling reminder of what it once was. However, in October 2022 it was reported that the airport had been given approval to reopen to cargo planes as soon as 2025, so it may become an aviation hub once more. 

Even though it's big enough to handle more than 300,000 passengers a year, Jaisalmer Airport in Rajasthan was left empty immediately after its completion in 2013 and never saw a single traveller pass through. It gets worse: Jaisalmer is one of eight airports constructed by the Indian government which have never been used, despite costing a combined total of more than £44 million ($50m) to build.

While government representatives defended the decision to build the airport, due to the fact the nearest aviation hub is some 180 miles (290km) away, airlines said there simply wasn't the demand from passengers to support flights here. Inside the deserted airport you'll find empty baggage carousels, rows of seats gathering dust, while outside there are poorly-maintained roads and buildings gradually being taken over by desert sands. 

Now discover the airports that are far away from the places they claim to serve