Lufthansa is Europe’s largest airline, has the money, personnel and Know-how. However, on the restoration of an ancient noble aircraft has upheld the Airline.
It is the end of the high-flying technology dream. The freighter “Industrial Dart” from the United States in a plane-vintage Lufthansa to Bremen, arriving on Tuesday. A good 60 years old this Lockheed L-1649A Super Star, she was the most elegant propeller-driven passenger plane. Now it is divided into fuselage, wings, engines and other parts.
Ten years, from 2008 to 2018, the Lufthansa Technik in Auburn in the U.S. state of Maine to restore the machine, and with modern navigation technology equip. Retro flights in the luxury class wanted to offer the Airline. Now an exile of uncertain duration in a warehouse in Bremen’s port threatens to be the former Queen of the skies. “Complicated and complex” to be the recovery and a possible operation of the aircraft, not to mention a commercial use, was of the Lufthansa Executive Board 2018.
More than 100 million Euro sunk
So only the way to the Museum remains. “Currently, the first Reflection for an exhibition concept will be developed. These are currently not yet ready for decision,” according to Lufthansa on request. “There is a certain degree of bitterness,” says Wolfgang Servay of the Deutsche Lufthansa Berlin-Stiftung to the end of the project. The Foundation is officially the owner of the aircraft.
Over the years, the Lufthansa team have put a lot of heart and soul into the restoration – and also a lot of money. The cost of no information. In the aviation trade press Figures of more than 100 million euros are circulating.
A partially restored and packaged Lockheed L-1649A Super Star is transported to the shipment to Germany of Auburn to the port of Portland
The most beautiful aircraft in the world
The Super Star was for the Lufthansa not just any plane, but at the end of the 1950s, the flagship of their flights across the Atlantic. Only 44 units were built of this largest Version of the Lockheed constellation. With the distinctive three-leaf rear, the Super Star was regarded as the most beautiful aircraft in the world. They carried 40 to 90 passengers comfortably across the ocean.
Four piston engines carried the machine up to 8700 miles. However, the engines were so high-bred and prone to failure, that connoisseur mocked the Super Star as “the best three-engined aircraft in the world”. According to this height – and endpoint of the development of the era of jet aircraft in the passenger transport began.
Three-in-one
The restoration was “even for a large aviation company’s too complex,” says Servay in retrospect. Originally, the Lufthansa had bought three decommissioned Super Star, to a flight-capable machine to assemble. However, the optimism was strained, the more in Auburn, the problems became more frequent. “If we had known what was coming to us, we would have left the fingers of it”, was quoted by the former Lufthansa CEO Wolfgang Mayrhuber once. Under him, the adventure had begun.
Many parts were corroded, proved to be unsuitable and had to be painstakingly recreated. So the old hull got new doors. But every new part needed the approval of the US aviation authority FAA. And even if the authority was not the main problem, as Servay says, and retrofitting with modern navigation systems, it failed, ultimately, to the “overall complexity of the project”.
Similar to the air travel expert Henry it looks great bongardt. “The more you hinguckte, the more you had to make to the bird,” he says of the German press Agency. “This is a bit like buying an old house.” Nevertheless, he expects it of the Lufthansa high, to have it with the dream of a vintage fly tried. “This is a merit in a period in which the aviation industry is extremely numbers driven.” So Lufthansa is not set now that the Super Star will never fly again. But expert large bongardt holds excluded for. The decision was the Separation of the wings favor. “The wing connection is Central for the stability of an aircraft,” he said.
In the Bremer warehouse is the Super Star company of another vintage, the Lufthansa also from flight operations has taken a Junkers Ju 52 from 1936 gets. Before you come to the Museum, can tell the two icons of air travel something to each other: flights across the Atlantic or on the außenalster lake, or of appearances at U.S. air shows.