Super Star: Lufthansa Technik reveals newly reassembled Lockheed Super Constellation
January 20, 2025
Lufthansa Technik has unveiled a newly reassembled Lockheed Constellation L-1649A ‘Super Star,’ the flagship of the Lufthansa fleet at the end of the 1950s, which will form the centrepiece of a new visitor centre for the airline’s centenary next year.
Although this particular airframe never served with the Lufthansa, the type nevertheless served as the fleet’s flagship aircraft when first acquired in 1957; offering ‘Senator Class’ on its transatlantic services.
Originally delivered to TWA in 1957 and last flown in 1983, this specific aircraft was acquired by Lufthansa in 2008 with the view to restoring it to airworthy condition. However, with the project discontinued a decade later, the aircraft was shipped from Lufthana’s Maine, US facility to Bremmen, Germany, where it was stored before being relocated again to Lufthansa Technik’s base in Hamburg for further reassembly work.
This site is significant to both Lufthansa and Lufthansa Technik, with Hamburg previously both the aircraft’s transatlantic departure location and the home of its maintenance base. The Deutsche Lufthansa Berlin-Stiftung foundation is also noted as instrumental as “supporting this unique project”.
With the fuselage, wings and characteristic tri-tail unit arriving at Hamburg in October 2023, “the challenge for the Hamburg technical team initially involved the precise assembly of several large components,” explained the Lufthansa Group, which also took delivery of 292 wooden crates of smaller parts.
Additionally, with the airframe now destined to remain a static item only, the non-airworthy assembly has allowed the cockpit to remain “as true to the original as possible from the 1950s” – including functional lighting and manual flight controls. Replica carpet and curtains are based on historical patterns, while the reupholstered and repurposed seats originate from an earlier Lufthansa A340.
Although the Super Constellation’s 17-hour four-engine piston-powered North Atlantic trips are long over, this aircraft’s next journey – disassembled into a number of larger segments – will be to Münster/Osnabrück Airport this coming July, where it will be reassembled and painted in its original Lufthansa ‘Parabola’ scheme. It will then move to its final home in Frankfurt in October, where it will form the main attraction of the Lufthansa Group’s new conference and visitor centre, protected from the elements.
