Let's buy her Ted.
First passenger 747
decaying in Korea
The oldest 747 to fly commercially could be expected to enjoy an honored retirement somewhere in an aviation museum. After all, the only jumbo jet more senior — the first one built, which was only used for test flights — now sits outside Seattle's Museum of Flight.
But the plane delivered to Pan Am four decades ago now languishes in a near-deserted suburban lot outside Seoul, South Korea, its insides musty with old menus and upended chairs scattered across the floor, the Los Angeles Times reports:
Purchased by South Korean investors from a Southern California airplane graveyard a decade ago, the airliner — dubbed the "Juan T. Trippe" after the Pan Am founder — endured years as an aviation-themed restaurant. Then that venture failed.
Its owner winces each time she stands beneath the big fuselage, which reminds her of a business miscalculation of colossal proportions.
"We have no regret in purchasing the plane, just sadness — a feeling of emptiness," said the owner, a 50-ish woman looking smart in a brightly colored scarf who declines to give her name because of her embarrassment over the lost gamble.
Boeing officials say the Trippe was the second 747 of the 1,000 the company has produced. A different 747 was the first to enter commercial service for Pan Am in January 1970, as the Trippe remained part of the flight test program for several months.
"This plane helped shrink the world," said Michael Lombardi, Boeing's corporate historian. "It brought people together, making it possible for anyone anywhere in the world to get on a plane and go anywhere else in the world."
The Trippe went into service in October 1970. The plane's current owner has a photo of then-first lady Pat Nixon smashing a bottle of Champagne to christen the aircraft, as well as the plane's depiction on the Jan. 19, 1970, cover of Time magazine.
The airliner was shown at the 1970 Paris air show before spending the next 21 years on transatlantic flights for Pan Am, a record interrupted only by a two-year loan to an air company in Zaire.
The niche website www.airliners.net contains numerous photos of the Trippe in service, including a touchdown at New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport on Nov. 1, 1991, that marked Pan Am's discontinuation of transatlantic service to the airport.
The "tired old bird" went on to be used in cargo service before ending its airborne career with Aeroposta, an Argentine charter airline, according to the website.
Eventually retired to a Southern California aircraft lot, the Trippe soon began yet another life.
A South Korean couple purchased the jet in 2000 on the wings of a trend in South Korea that used real airplanes to house theme restaurants.
They paid more than $1 million for the Trippe, betting that the plane's history would draw customers. Then they peeled off $100,000-plus to have the jet disassembled and shipped to South Korea in 62 40-foot containers. |
