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 ne of those Connies can be found at the Airline History Museum at the
Kansas City Downtown Airport, in Hangar 9, at 201 N.W. Lou Holland
Drive. This particular Connie, the Lockheed Super Constellation
L-1049H, was built in 1958 as a cargo plane for Slick Airways. It was
one of the very last to roll off the assembly line at Lockheed’s
manufacturing plant in Burbank.
In the 1960s it was used to ferry supplies and personnel to Vietnam.
It then served as a pesticide sprayer in Canada. For eleven years it
lay dormant in the desert sun at Falcon Field in Mesa, Arizona, where
it was repeatedly vandalized and used as a nest by varmints and birds.
In 1986 a bidder bought the airplane for less than $5,000. He then
donated it to an outfit in Kansas City called Save-a-Connie, composed
of former pilots, mechanics, technicians, and flight attendants.
In May of that year a Kansas City crew arrived to begin the long and
complicated process of salvaging the craft and making it airworthy.
On July 15, 1986, after nine weeks of intensive work, the plane flew
from Arizona to the downtown Kansas City airport, where it was
received by an enthusiastic crowd.
In the South Pacific during World War II, native islanders regarded
military aircraft as messengers from the gods. After the war, when
the airplanes disappeared, the natives maintained a vigil, fueling
fires alongside the primitive airstrips and gazing up into the sky.
There’s something similar at work for Connie lovers. Like a South
Pacific “cargo cult,” the crowd at Downtown Airport that day in ‘86
spontaneously circled the craft as it drew to a halt on the tarmac,
holding hands and cheering the flight crew as they came down the
stairs.
The Connie was moved into a hangar at the north end of the airport,
where it was completely reconstructed. Workers restored the original
look of the cockpit with its quilted insulation, and repaired or
replaced the control panels and pedestals. They then gutted the
fuselage interior and restored it to a 1950s style.
The aircraft was formally dedicated on July 9, 1988, in front of where
the old terminal once stood with its observation deck, amidst clouds
of bunting and a band honking out patriotic favorites. Astronaut
Scott Carpenter delivered the celebratory remarks.
The following year, the Connie was flown for the first time since
arriving in Kansas City, and the Federal Aviation Administration
issued an air worthiness certificate.
Save-a-Connie changed its name to the Airline History Museum in 2000.
The organization gives rides to people who pay the yearly $110 dues to
join the Museum.
In flight, Connie consumes 500 gallons of fuel an hour, so operational
costs are high--$2,600 an hour, says Foe Geldersma, president of the
not-for-profit museum. Geldersma, a genial man in his early 70s, is a
former pilot and flight engineer for TWA.
The Connie makes 12 to 15 flights a year, mostly to Airshows around
the country from June to October. The museum’s primary source of
revenue comes from donations and from the memorabilia it sells at
Airshows and in its gift shop.
Just across from the gift shop inside the museum is a cut-away model
of the 18 cylinder, double-row, radial, Wright engine. The engine
weighs 3,645 lbs. and generates 3,400 horse power.
It resembles a Rube Goldberg contraption: wheels connected to rods,
connected to cogs, connected to pumps, connected to generators,
connected to spark plugs, connected to cylinders, connected to shafts,
connected to pistons--a bewildering, interlocking maze of moveable
parts that meshes synchronistically to power the plane through the
air.
By comparison, the engines of today’s jet aircraft are simpler to
produce and maintain, but nowhere near as fascinating.
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