A decaying Douglas C-47 in Tabatinga

BRASÍLIA—Getting Brazil’s overcrowded airports ready to play host to soccer’s 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games has run into an unexpected obstacle: airplane cemeteries on the tarmac.

At airfields from the muggy Amazon to bustling São Paulo, weather-stained aircraft missing doors, engines and even the odd nose cone rust away in plain sight. The failed fleet includes everything from weather-beaten Boeing 737s in Rio de Janeiro to a World War II-era Douglas C-47 cargo prop idled in the Amazonian outpost of Tabatinga. It has been sitting there for 16 years.

Brazil’s Olympian Task: Cleaning Junkyard Airports Before the Games – WSJ.com.