5 Amazing Examples of Aircraft Restoration

Sometimes, you can’t help but feel a twinge of sadness whenever you see a stricken aircraft, or any machine for that matter, at the end of its life. Your thoughts drift to its previous existence, the stories it would have to tell, the enjoyment, sadness, love, laughter, distress and panic it’s brought to millions of people the world over as it carries humans and cargo from one place to another.

Sometimes however, aircraft are saved from death or storage - some are put back into operational service in far-flung corners of the world, some are put into museums, and some are altered completely....in this blog post I’ll look at 5 amazing examples of aircraft restoration, and see what good uses they’re being put to in another life.

Turn it into a  Hotel

http://www.jumbostay.se/

The ‘Jumbo Hostel’ at Arlanda Airport, Stockholm, is one of a number of fascinating and creative aircraft hotel designs which gives people the opportunity to stay in a pretty much unaltered Boeing 747. The interior has been decorating brilliantly, with all amenities and modern facilities you’d expect in a European Hostel.

Live In It

If you can’t travel in it, and it isn’t a hotel, then why not turn an airliner into a house? This amazing creation is giving a new life to an old Avianca Boeing 727, and is one of the most creative uses for an aircraft I’ve ever seen. Good work!

Recycle It

There’s a growing trend in the aviation industry that when an aircraft comes to the end of its life, the majority of it gets recycled to a point where nearly 95% of the aircraft can be used again. The video below goes some way to showing how much of an aircraft Boeing uses before the scrap metal goes to the yard.

Rescue it from the Desert

You hear stories of people uncovering abandoned aircraft in the desert and recovering them...and this example of a North American P-40 Kittyhawk is a wonderful example. The aircraft was believed to have belonged to the RAF’s 260 Squadron - and additionally it is believed that Flight Sergeant Dennis Copping stood no chance of survival in the intense heat and desert conditions.

Turn it Into a Museum Piece

Every once in a while, something happens in the aviation industry which is not only a cause for celebration but marks a distinctive moment in modern jet travel. When Chelsey Sullenburger ditched his US Airways A320 in the Hudson River, I think we all knew that the aircraft couldn’t just be thrown away. It is now on proud display at a museum in Charlotte - the intended destination of the aircraft.

Image: The Financial Press


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