By Larry Denning
Adapted from a story by Dave Albright
Photos by Skip Gatschet
Connie at the Movies
We visit the set of "The Aviator",
the story of Howard Hughes,
in San Bernardino, CA
  

n Tuesday, the 21st of October, the Airline History Museum Lockheed Constellation left the Kansas City Downtown Airport for a flight to San Bernardino, California. The Connie's job was to appear in scenes for a new movie about the life of Howard Hughes. As of this writing, the movie's title is "The Aviator". With a very well known director and a cast of famous actors, our Connie will very likely be seen on thousands of movie screens the world over, once this picture is released.

Several months ago, the AHM was contacted by a firm specializing in providing aircraft to motion picture producers for both static display and flying scenes. They had heard about our Lockheed Constellation and wanted more information about the current paint scheme and the availability of the aircraft. They were very pleased to learn that the Connie not only had a new paint job, but that it was in a very accurate former TWA livery. They felt it would be perfect for the upcoming movie production. A group of our AHM officers did a cost analysis on a round trip from Kansas City to San Bernardino and came up with some figures. A period of negotiations followed and it wasn't long before a deal was signed.

Since the flights out and back could each be over six hours of non-stop flying, it was decided that extra crew members would join the normal two pilot and two engineer crew. Having three pilots, two Captains and one First Officer, would allow the pilots to take a break during the long flights. The addition of an extra Flight Engineer would not only help out during flight time, but the extra engineer could be utilized during any aircraft related activities required by the movie production crew. The two Captains were Skip Gatschet and Joe Orr, and they were assisted by First Officer Dave Albright. The Flight Engineers were Tery McMaster, Foe Geldersma, and Dick Gooch.