Lufthansa Technik Wraps Up Constellation Aircraft Restoration

After 18 years, Lufthansa Technik (LHT) is finally putting the finishing touches on one of the most ambitious aircraft maintenance projects in its history. In the mid-2000s, parent company Lufthansa Group’s Deutsche Lufthansa Berlin-Stiftung (DLBS) historic flight foundation decided to add a Lockheed 1649A Super Star to its fleet of flying museum pieces, which included the Junkers Ju-52/3M.

As the final iteration of the successful four-engine Constellation family, and marking the end of the piston-engined passenger airliner era, the L1649A joined the Lufthansa fleet in 1957 on the nonstop transatlantic route between New York and Hamburg. Four of the aircraft (out of the 44 built) served until they were superseded by the Boeing 707 in the mid-1960s. The Super Star saw the inauguration of the airline’s first-class “Senator” service with an onboard chef catering to the 32 passengers who endured the nearly 15-hour flight from the comfort of sleeper beds and nearly lie-flat seats.

As the aircraft were eventually retired from service, a private collector in Maine acquired three of the survivors. He had two flown to Auburn/Lewiston Municipal Airport (KLEW), his home field, while the third, in Florida, was never able to be fixed up enough to make the ferry flight north. DLBS purchased the three airframes, more than a dozen massive R-3350 Wright turbo-compound radial engines, and a trove of spare parts with the goal of fielding one airworthy example.

The city of Auburn, Maine, built a hangar for the LHT crew to work on the airframe that was selected for restoration to make it airworthy. Regarding the other two aircraft, one is in the Fantasy of Flight collection in Polk City, Florida, while the other serves as an outdoor cocktail lounge at the TWA Hotel at New York JFK International Airport.

“As you can imagine, the aircraft were in very bad shape after such a long period,” said Oliver Sturm, who has been with the program since 2008 and is leading the restoration project. “I think the last time it flew was at the end of the 1980s. It was stored in Maine, and the weather on the East Coast is a lot of rain and snow. The structure at the end was so bad we had to replace nearly every panel on the aircraft, so the structure is brand new, I could say zero-flight hours.”

The work was done by a small group of dedicated LHT technicians, supplemented by retired workers and trainees. It continued for a decade, even enduring an accidental hangar foam suppression discharge that ruined reams of paperwork and volumes of documents. While that set the project back by several months, only the structural portion of the aircraft was in the hangar during the discharge, and all components were fortunately crated up in a nearby warehouse.

By 2018, the company faced a reckoning of what it would take to recertify the aircraft in terms of time, with estimates of the project dragging on for another five years at the then pace of work, but in the summer of that year, the fatal crash of another operator’s historic aircraft—a tri-motor Ju-52 during a sightseeing tour in the Swiss Alps that claimed 20 lives—caused European authorities to institute tighter scrutiny for vintage aircraft flights. That was the final straw; Lufthansa officials then decided to abandon plans for the Super Star’s return to flight, opting instead to prepare it for static display in honor of the brand’s 100th anniversary in 2026.

After another brutal Maine winter, the airplane—disassembled into four large pieces, along with more than 300 crates of parts and components—was loaded on flatbed transports in early 2019 and trucked to nearby Portland, Maine. Once it was transferred to a cargo ship and sent to Bremen, Germany, the airframe was placed in storage until 2023, when it arrived at the LHT facility in Hamburg for the restart of the restoration program.

Preparing the L1649 for display rather than flight was a weight off the restoration crew’s backs. “The big difference is if you don’t have to follow any regulations, you don’t need engineering, you don’t need paperwork, and so on,” Sturm told AIN. “It makes it much, much easier to go ahead.”

Yet, that doesn’t mean the work would be conducted with any less dedication or attention to detail. “Because we are all engineers, mechanics, and sheet metal workers, we do the job as if it were a flyable aircraft at the end,” he added. Among the surprises Sturm encountered during the course of the project was the realization that the Connie’s wings were each attached to the fuselage by just eight big bolts.

At the end of the second quarter, the reassembled Super Star was rolled out of the hangar at Hamburg and was greeted by a sea of more than 2,000 cheering company employees and guests. “That gave me goosebumps,” said Sturm. “If you ever want to see grown-up guys with tears in their eyes, that would have been the moment.”

The aircraft was once again disassembled and trucked to Münster/Osnabrück Airport, where the four subassemblies were given the vintage Lufthansa “parabolic” paint scheme that the type wore during the 1950s and 1960s. The work was carried out by Altitude Paint Services, with Hamburg-based manufacturer Mankiewicz providing around 500 liters of special paint free of charge.

Still in subassembly form, the Constellation was then moved to Frankfurt, its final destination. Once reassembled for the last time, it will be the centerpiece in the new visitor and conference center under construction at the Lufthansa Group’s headquarters, along with the 1930s-era Ju-52.

Although regulations require the L1649A to be entirely drained of fluids before going on display, Sturm said that will be virtually the only concession in terms of functionality. “If somebody goes to the new visitor center and looks at the aircraft, they should have the feeling that the aircraft is in flyable condition,” he explained. “If you look into the landing gear, every hose, every tube in it, every cable is installed.”

That same level of detail goes for the cockpit as well. Since the airplane will not return to flight and did not have to incorporate any modern avionics to meet regulatory standards, the front office will be representative of 1950s technology. As for the cabin, LHT prefers to keep that under wraps until the formal unveiling of the Super Star next year during the centennial anniversary, noting only that it will have a functional 1950s coffee maker in the galley.