Lufthansa Technik engineers in Germany are nearing the completion of an ambitious project to rebuild and put on display a vintage Lockheed L-1649A Starliner propliner. The project, which has been in planning for 18 years, will eventually see the fully restored airliner put on display at a new Lufthansa Visitor’s Center being completed in Frankfurt for early 2026.
As reported by AIN, in the mid-2000s, parent company Lufthansa Group’s Deutsche Lufthansa Berlin-Stiftung (DLBS) historic flight foundation decided to add a Lockheed 1649A Starliner to its fleet of museum pieces, which included the former Lufthansa Junkers Ju-52 registered as D-AQUI.
In 1957, the Lockheed ‘Super Star’ (as the type became known within the company) joined the Lufthansa fleet to serve points between Germany and the United States. On these flights, the airline offered its Senator class for the first time in the carrier’s history. Passengers could enjoy the benefits of an onboard chef with fresh catering, while the 32 passengers could pass the nearly 17-hour flight enjoying the luxury of sleeping accommodation and almost lie-flat seats.
With its four piston engines, the Super Stars heralded a new era of transatlantic air travel. These flights departed from Hamburg, where the airline’s maintenance base was also located. The roll-out of the newly renovated Super Star in January 2025, therefore, took place at a location of equal importance to Lufthansa and Lufthansa Technik. Four of the aircraft (out of the 44 built) served with the carrier until they were superseded by the next-generation Boeing 707 in the mid-1960s.
Lufthansa Super Star GmbH (LSSG) was established as a subsidiary company of the Lufthansa Group in 2015 to restore the aircraft, originally a Trans World Airlines 1957-vintage machine, to airworthy condition. Work on the aircraft originally began where the aircraft was stored at that point in Auburn, Maine.
However, in 2018, after investing over 150 million euros into the project, along with over ten years of labor, the plans to return the Lockheed Super Star to the air were discontinued due to a lack of funds and soaring costs.
However, unwilling to confine the aircraft to the scrapper, LSSG vowed to continue its good work in restoring the airplane to a high static-only condition. In 2019, the aircraft was shipped to Bremen in Germany, where it was stored until February 2021, when it was transported to Paderborn. Then, in October 2023, it was relocated once more in sections to Lufthansa Technik’s base in Hamburg for full re-assembly and for its preservation efforts to be completed.
The re-assembly process in the hangar in Hamburg was always destined to be a painstaking and lengthy process. The larger of the aircraft components, including the fuselage sections, wings, and the type’s iconic triple tail structure, arrived at Lufthansa Technik in October 2023, accompanied by 292 crates of smaller parts. Since then, a team of dedicated engineers has slowly pieced the aircraft back together, not sparing any detail in their work.
In January 2025, the fully assembled aircraft rolled out of the hangar in Hamburg and was presented to the media. Although one thing was still clearly missing from the aircraft’s appearance – its restoration into its iconic Lufthansa color scheme of the 1950s. Once rolled out, the aircraft was dismantled once again into larger segments to be transported to Münster/Osnabrück Airport (FMO) in the summer of 2025.
A new-old stunning paint job
In August 2025, the aviation icon was repainted from its dull green overall finish of the past and into the classic look of the 1950s. The plane received a completely new paint job at Münster/Osnabrück Airport. The work was carried out by Altitude Paint Services (APS), with Hamburg-based manufacturer Mankiewicz donating around 500 liters of special paint free of charge.
“One of the major challenges was painting the legendary parabolas, a central element of Lufthansa’s historical design,” said a Lufthansa Technik statement. “The repainting was based on historical documents from the company archive and the detailed paint plan developed by the Graphics Solutions department at Lufthansa Technik in Hamburg.”
Since its repainting, the Super Star has now been transported by heavy-duty vehicle to Frankfurt Airport (FRA). Just in time for the 100th anniversary of the original Lufthansa’s founding, it will become, starting in spring 2026, the main attraction of the Lufthansa Group’s new conference and visitor center, together with the famous Junkers Ju 52 D-AQUI.
The Lufthansa Technik statement added, “Thanks to a glass façade [at the conference and visitors’ center], the exhibits will also be clearly visible from the outside.”
