This is where you will find detailed information on the "resurrection" of the L1649A.
Dean Raineri has been in charge of the Lockheed Super Star Team at Lufthansa Technik AG since the beginning of the year 2010. Editor Wolfgang Borgmann asked the 54-year-old engineer about the current status of the project. Work on the Super Star is being closely coordinated with the FAA.
With the support of the Swiss Super Constellation Flyers Association (SCFA) the first Deutsche Lufthansa Berlin-Stiftung (DLBS) cockpit crews obtained their licenses for the Lockheed Constellation family – and hence also for the L-1649A Super Star – in the autumn of 2009.
To provide substitutes for the cabin doors removed from South African L-1649A (News 7/2009), two aircraft engineers from the Deutsche Lufthansa Berlin-Stiftung have been working since July of 2009 on the fabrication of replica units for the museum which match the original doors in virtually every respect.
The team that is working in Auburn, Maine on the restoration of the Super Star L-1649A has largely completed its assessment work. Production capacity in the hangar in Auburn will therefore be cut back to about one-third with immediate effect, running through April 2010.
About a year has elapsed since the beginning of the work on the Super Star. The structural checks have made considerable progress and many components are in the workshops.
At Anderson Aeromotive, Idaho, USA, a company that specializes in the overhaul of large piston engines, reconstruction of the first engine for the Super Star commenced in July.
The arrival of the two Super Star passenger doors in Hamburg represents another milestone along the road to conversion of the L-1649A freighter in Auburn back to a passenger aircraft.
The second of the Deutsche Lufthansa Berlin-Stiftung’s three Lockheed L-1649A’s has been standing on the apron outside the Lufthansa Technik project hangar in Auburn, opened in November 2008, since 26 May.
Our contractor the “Deutsche Lufthansa Technik” had a visitor
The good news was preceded by an intensive search lasting several months – but finally it is over: Super Star passenger doors for conversion of the L-1649A back from freighter to passenger aircraft have been tracked down.
The basic configuration of the new cockpit for the Lockheed Super Star was finalized in February. Four modern displays plus historical instruments will supply the crew with all the information they will need for safe flying operations in the future.
The main and nose landing gears of the Super Star arrived well packed in the landing gear shop of Lufthansa Technik in Hamburg in December after being flown in from Auburn, Maine. Over the next few months they will be restored to health here, ready for future flying operations in the service of the Lufthansa Berlin-Stiftung.
Rolling the Lockheed L1649A "Super Star" into a new maintenance hangar at the Auburn-Lewiston airport in Maine, USA, takes the renovation of this historic long-haul aircraft, which belongs to the Deutsche Lufthansa Berlin-Stiftung, into a new phase.
Immediately after the celebration of the opening of the L1649A maintenance hangar in Auburn, work on the plane began to move forward in giant strides.
Lufthansa Technik's Super Star team in Auburn has already carried out extensive preparatory work and dismantled the aircraft right down to its core structure.
