7 Unique Aircraft Conversions

1. HK-3133X Boeing 727 to vacation retreat, Quepos, Costa Rica. Overlooking the Pacific from its jungle hillside perch, the former Columbian Avianca airliner is now a two-bedroom suite at Hotel Costa Verde, its interior finished in locally sourced hardwoods.

2. Boeing 307 Stratoliner to houseboat, Lakeland, Florida. Sporting an executive interior by industrial-design pioneer Raymond Loewy, Howard Hughes’s Stratoliner was converted into a houseboat in the 1970s (dubbed “the Cosmic Muffin” by singer Jimmy Buffett) and donated to the Florida Air Museum in 2016. 

3. RNZAF NZ3556 Douglas DC-3/C-47B-Dk to café, Mangaweka, New Zealand. Gear down, feet above the roadside, the former Royal New Zealand Air Force and National Airways Corporation transport, retired in 1981, is now the landmark Cookie Time Café whose exterior is painted in a chocolate-chip-cookie motif.

4. Boeing 747-212B to budget hotel, Stockholm, Sweden. Last flown by Transjet, a now- bankrupt airline, the reconfigured transport offers 33 rooms at Arlanda Airport, including a cockpit suite and small quarters in each of the four engine nacelles.

5. Boeing 747 to showplace residence, Malibu, California. Architect David Hertz retrieved one of Pan Am’s first 747s from a boneyard to build a client’s 5,000-square-foot luxury home, entirely roofed with the aircraft’s wings and horizontal stabilizer. 

6. Iterflug Ilyusin Il-18 to hotel suite, Teuge, the Netherlands. This ex–East German airline transport was first operated by the government to ferry specially bred DDR German shepherds and is now a luxury hotel suite, complete with Jacuzzi and infrared sauna, at Teuge International Airport. 

7. Lockheed L-1039 Super Constellation to cocktail lounge, Penndel, Pennsylvania. This Connie took a retirement job as cocktail lounge for the popular Constellation Restaurant until the late 1990s, when it was donated to the Air Mobility Command Museum at Dover Air Force Base, where it is displayed in Military Air Transport Service livery.