There is also El Avion in Costa Rica. A restaurant/bar maade of a couple of planes transported there for that purpose... including the famous CIA plane that crashed while transporting cocaine.
Great food, really cool place to eat in Manuel Antonio.
> Its previous owner, a charter company called Blue Falcon Corp, ....
I smiled at that one. It was like when, probably 1980 or so, the Austin American-Statesman newspaper ran a photo of a "robot" parading in front of the White House. The caption explained that the robot's name was FUBAR: Futuristic Uranium-powered Bio-Atomic Robot. Evidently the Statesman's photo editor had never served in the military — or had served, and intentionally ran the photo and caption ....
Sounds like their plans are to make it like an exhibit and/or field trip for kids to learn about aviation.
It would be neat if they refurbished the cockpit to make it operational and changed the windscreens to computer monitors, basically make it a low-feature simulator that people could experience.
Planes include crap tons of specialized toxic materials. Converting it to any use other than flying is a major, expensive hassle. Such an old plane might as well be free or paid $$ to be taken away.
> he hopes the plane can serve as an educational tool and visual attraction to bring more excitement to his hometown. And he already has a name in mind: “Hangar Hangout.”
> back-of-the-envelope math and estimated they could probably complete the entire project for around $250,000—maybe less if they did most of the work themselves
This sounds pretty cool and I wish them luck, but I suspect their estimate is pretty far off.
Everything about old jets like this is highly specialized and "refurbishing" anything with real parts, or even just matching "period" parts, is likely to be an absolute money sink.
The vast majority of the cost of aviation parts is paperwork. This won’t ever fly again, so there’s no need to get parts that are certified.
If they need a part and can find one that is used up, they’ll be able to get it dirt cheap - it’s literally trash when it’s reached its service life limits.
Not to mention, they can buy hardware (e.g. bolts) from Home Depot at 1% the cost of certified stuff.
Wouldn’t surprise me if they can hit the 250k budget and have something that looks serviceable (but will never fly again; that bridge was crossed long ago anyway).
That’s a “there is fuel” paperwork thing, not a plane paperwork thing. Probably would have cost that if that much fuel was in a bunch of buckets in an Oscar-Meyer Weinermobile.
It was less than 3k gallons of fuel - they probably could have dealt with it themselves (I bet someone out there would have loved to heat their house with that; it’s just really nice kerosene), had their initial reaction not been to call the authorities. After that point their hands were tied.
In the UK, a plane was turned into a restaurant. Called Steaks on a Plane.
Brilliant.
There is also El Avion in Costa Rica. A restaurant/bar maade of a couple of planes transported there for that purpose... including the famous CIA plane that crashed while transporting cocaine.
Great food, really cool place to eat in Manuel Antonio.
https://www.tripadvisor.com/Restaurant_Review-g309274-d15099...
> Its previous owner, a charter company called Blue Falcon Corp, ....
I smiled at that one. It was like when, probably 1980 or so, the Austin American-Statesman newspaper ran a photo of a "robot" parading in front of the White House. The caption explained that the robot's name was FUBAR: Futuristic Uranium-powered Bio-Atomic Robot. Evidently the Statesman's photo editor had never served in the military — or had served, and intentionally ran the photo and caption ....
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/blue_falcon
This guy should consider this concept Flight Sim Cafe https://www.facebook.com/1Aeroflightsimcafe/
Sounds like their plans are to make it like an exhibit and/or field trip for kids to learn about aviation.
It would be neat if they refurbished the cockpit to make it operational and changed the windscreens to computer monitors, basically make it a low-feature simulator that people could experience.
Planes include crap tons of specialized toxic materials. Converting it to any use other than flying is a major, expensive hassle. Such an old plane might as well be free or paid $$ to be taken away.
> he hopes the plane can serve as an educational tool and visual attraction to bring more excitement to his hometown. And he already has a name in mind: “Hangar Hangout.”
> back-of-the-envelope math and estimated they could probably complete the entire project for around $250,000—maybe less if they did most of the work themselves
This sounds pretty cool and I wish them luck, but I suspect their estimate is pretty far off.
Everything about old jets like this is highly specialized and "refurbishing" anything with real parts, or even just matching "period" parts, is likely to be an absolute money sink.
But good luck! Sounds fun
The vast majority of the cost of aviation parts is paperwork. This won’t ever fly again, so there’s no need to get parts that are certified.
If they need a part and can find one that is used up, they’ll be able to get it dirt cheap - it’s literally trash when it’s reached its service life limits.
Not to mention, they can buy hardware (e.g. bolts) from Home Depot at 1% the cost of certified stuff.
Wouldn’t surprise me if they can hit the 250k budget and have something that looks serviceable (but will never fly again; that bridge was crossed long ago anyway).
That paperwork for a permanently grounded plane cost them an unexpected $25k just to remove the fuel.
That’s a “there is fuel” paperwork thing, not a plane paperwork thing. Probably would have cost that if that much fuel was in a bunch of buckets in an Oscar-Meyer Weinermobile.
It was less than 3k gallons of fuel - they probably could have dealt with it themselves (I bet someone out there would have loved to heat their house with that; it’s just really nice kerosene), had their initial reaction not been to call the authorities. After that point their hands were tied.
Probably bought it at a crash sale.
The article does mention why the plane is for sale.