The Lockheed L-1649A Starliner was the queen of the skies in the late 1950s and it might again become a familiar sight aloft, according to officials at Lufthansa Technik. In cooperation with the company’s Tulsa, Okla. subsidiary, BizJet, restoration on one of the 50-year-old propliners is under way at a specially built hangar at Auburn-Lewiston Airport in Maine.
The Starliner, the final iteration of Lockheed’s successful Constellation series, had several operator titles. For Lufthansa, it was the Super Star. TWA knew it as the Jet Stream, and Air France called it the Super Starliner. Whatever the name, the four-engine transport was the last word in long-range airborne luxury in the days before passenger jet travel. Joining Lufthansa’s fleet as flagship starting in 1958, the four Super Stars–out of a total of 44 built–were used on the nonstop transatlantic route until the Boeing 707 superseded them in the mid-1960s. The Super Stars saw the inauguration of Lufthansa’s first-class service. An onboard chef catered to the 32 passengers, who made the nearly 15-hour flight from Hamburg to New York in the comfort of sleeper beds and nearly lie-flat seats.
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