Lockheed L749A Constellation N6022C of Trans World Airlines at London (Heathrow) Airport in 1954Kansas City, MO — The National Airline History Museum is trying to raise $3.2 million to restore its Lockheed Constellation propeller-driven aircraft and recreate multimillionaire aviator Howard Hughes’ record-setting cross-country flight in the plane that transformed commercial air travel.
 
The Kansas City museum’s Constellation, or “Connie,” is one of only a handful of the 856 that were built and is still airworthy — with a little work. The museum is planning to fly it on April 17, 2014 — the 70th anniversary of the 1944 inaugural flight piloted by Hughes and TWA president and co-founder Jack Frye. The nonstop flight took 6 hours and 58 minutes, cutting the time of previous coast-to-coast flights in half.
 
“It was a major leap forward, which is why we want to do the flight because it was so significant in the development of the airline industry,” said John Roper, the museum’s vice president of operations. “It was more than national travel; it ushered in global travel.”
 
The museum will recreate the journey with the aid of a copy of the original flight log, beginning in Burbank, Calif., and ending in Washington, D.C. Along the way, it will pass over the states of Arizona, New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky and the Virginias.
 
Roper said he hoped that a few celebrities who are aviation enthusiasts would join a volunteer crew of pilots, flight engineers, mechanics and flight attendants.
 
“What we are really trying to do is by getting the aircraft flying is to bring attention to a time in the airline industry when air travel was much more luxurious and it was elegant affair and there was some romance to flying on the airlines,” said Roper, himself a pilot who wants a chance to fly the Connie himself.
 
Learn more, get involved: http://www.flightoftheconnie.org/
 
Kansas City Museum Raising Cash to Fly ‘Connie’