A vintage TWA Lockheed Constellation airplane is currently en route to New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport where it will become a one-of-a-kind cocktail bar at the highly anticipated TWA Hotel.
The $265 million hotel and 1960s themed airplane cocktail lounge are scheduled to open next year.
The classic plane, which is one of only a handful of Starliners ever produced, will be towed more than 300 miles from Maine to New York.
"Our convoy is over a mile long. We have the state police, the oversized load and then our fuselage here is 150 feet long," Tyler Morse, CEO of the hotel owner and operator MCR and Morse Development told WGME. Morse's company is building the TWA Hotel. "This is quite a movement all the way down the northeast corridor."
Built in 1956, the special Lockheed Constellation, known as the "Connie," entered service in 1958 and was operated by Trans World Airlines for three years before becoming a bush pilot plane in Alaska, according to the Associated Press.
A drug-running plane in South America in the 1970s, the Connie was eventually abandoned in Honduras before being brought to Florida in the 1980s and ultimately Maine.
The TWA Hotel promises to restore the magic of Eero Saarinen's landmark 1962 TWA Flight Center. In addition to rooms boasting views of JFK's runways and the TWA Flight Center, the hotel will feature 50,000 square feet of meeting and event space; six restaurants; eight bars; a 10,000-square-foot rooftop observation deck with a pool; a 10,000-square-foot fitness facility and an on-site museum devoted to the Jet Age, TWA and the mid-century modern design movement, among other highlights.
Reservations for guestrooms at the 512-room hotel open in December.
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