MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — For 30 years, tourists from around the world have paid money to get a look at two airplanes once owned by Elvis Presley at Graceland in Memphis. Fans enjoy touring the planes for their direct connection to Presley and his jet-setting lifestyle, a sort of touchstone to the life of the King of Rock and Roll and his family. By April of next year, the planes named Lisa Marie and Hound Dog II could be gone.
Elvis Presley Enterprises, which operates the Graceland tourist attraction, has written to the planes’ owners saying they should prepare to remove the jets from Graceland by next spring.
The planes have been a tourist attraction since the mid-1980s. They had been sold after Presley’s death, and were eventually purchased by OKC Partnership in Memphis.
OKC Partnership and Graceland agreed to bring the two jets to Graceland. The agreement called for OKC Partnership to receive a cut of ticket sales in return for keeping the planes there.
In an April 7 letter to OKC Partnership’s K.G. Coker, Elvis Presley Enterprises CEO Jack Soden says the company is exercising its option to end the agreement and asks Coker “to make arrangements for the removal of the airplanes and the restoration of the site on or shortly after April 26, 2015.”
Their removal could cause an uproar among fans, especially those who visit Graceland every year as part of an annual pilgrimage to events such as Elvis Week and the candlelight vigil commemorating Presley’s death.
Graceland May Remove Presley’s Old Airplanes