At Frankfurt Airport
Super star turns home: Lufthansa shows historical aircraft
For the anniversary in the coming year, Lufthansa is donating a spectacular showroom. The first exhibit arrived at night that was once considered the most beautiful in the world.
The wings are still missing, but the Lockheed Super Star is already attracting everyone’s attention on the construction site at Frankfurt Airport. Compared to today’s aircraft jumbos, the aircraft fuselage newly painted in the historic Lufthansa dress looks amazingly petite. Together with a historic Junkers JU 52, the four-engine propeller aircraft from the 1950s is to become the public magnet of the new visitor and conference center right next to the Lufthansa headquarters.
The Super Star from the Constellation series symbolizes the highlight of the propeller-driven passenger aircraft and at the same time the flying spirit of optimism at the end of the 1950s, says project manager Wolfgang von Richthofen. Because as beautiful and elegant as it worked with its four 16-cylinder engines and the powerful three-fins on many contemporaries: comparatively quickly, the super star built in 44 copies was replaced by the open jet jets such as the Boeing 707.
Without stopping over the Atlantic
Also in the Lufthansa, which was founded again after the World War, she only played an intermediate role. From 1958 to 1960, the company used four great stars as passenger planes for up to 99 guests. Until the outstanding position in November 1965, the four -engine machines flew as a freighter. In line traffic, they mostly ran on the Hamburg-Frankfurt-New York route without stopover over the Atlantic. These flights lasted up to 17 hours.
The wings of the Super Star are expected in the coming week. Even older, namely from 1936, is the Junkers Ju 52, which until a few years ago was on sightseeing flights, for example in Frankfurt or for the Hamburg harbor festival. The “Aunt Ju” restored in Lippstadt-Paderborn with the historical identifier D-Aqui is to be brought to Frankfurt in September.
The fact that both planes have to roll by heavy transport is because they are no longer approved for air traffic. At the Super Star, Lufthansa Technik has given up ambitious plans to offer nostalgia flights for passengers.
The board stopped renovation for cost reasons
Unlike the Junkers, the exhibition machine never flown for Lufthansa. For ten years, technicians from the Lufthansa Berlin Foundation in Auburn in the US state of Maine tried to build a flying machine from three classic cars. An aircraft from the US company TWA, which had set significantly less rust, served as the basic structure than the also bought Lufthansa machine with the identification D-Alan.
The technical restoration itself and the necessary technical certification by the supervisory authorities turned out to be too complex. The board finally stopped fully renovation in 2018 for cost reasons, even if the many millions of sponsors are said to have been paid for.
The parts were finally shipped to Hamburg to Lufthansa Technik and brought to today’s museum. Since the work was already well advanced, the aircraft, newly painted in Münster, shines with authentic details in cockpit and cabin. So far, the company has not given any information about the costs for the center and the restoration of the two aircraft.
The visitor and conference center is to be opened in April and will be open to the public. “The center should become a special place,” says the project manager from the Richthofen family and has an eye on employees, aviation enthusiasts and passengers. In addition to fascinating technology and aviation pioneering spirit, the group also faces its own, not always glorious story.
Problematic role in National Socialism
With the anniversary in the coming spring, Lufthansa explicitly refers to the problematic predecessor German Luft Hansa Aktiengesellschaft, which was founded in 1926 at the urging of the German Reich Government. According to research, the company was closely integrated into the illegal upgrade of the German Reich and later important part of the National Socialist war apparatus. Thousands of forced laborers had to work for the first Hansa under exploitative conditions.
Order for new company history
It was not until April 1955, and thus almost ten years after the end of the Second World War, the first line flights of the newly founded Deutsche Lufthansa AG were allowed to stand out. At first, the Allies had prohibited the Germans of all air traffic.
Legally, today’s group has nothing to do with the predecessor founded in the Weimar Republic, but after the World War I secured the trademark rights of names, coloring and crane symbol. In 1999 the group joined the compensation fund for forced laborers and other Nazi victims. A new company history is scheduled to appear in March 2026. The company has commissioned historians Hartmut Berghoff, Manfred Grieger and Jörg Luczerski.
Communication Lufthansa on arrival super star
dpa
Source: Stern
