Last time I spoke with a widebody broker a few months ago, an old 747 with no equipment was a smidge less than $100k. Though with COVID, airworthy 747 freighters are 30-50 million....
Here's another person living in a 727: https://www.youtube.com/watch/?v=rKm5oF2p-II
This one has a much nicer interior: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdwLlI9abgU
According to one of the comments on the first video, they spent 120k on the plane, and another 100k to move it to the forest. I would probably want to spend another ~300k for renovations and everything else (proper foundation, shower, kitchen, water and sewer lines, etc. etc.)
It's not cheap, but that's a lot cheaper than I was expecting. Especially compared to the average house in an expensive city. I think it might also be a lot more fun than living in a "tiny house".
I recently read this "Why We Don't Like Our Underground House" article that was posted on HN: https://dengarden.com/misc/The-Pitfalls-of-an-Underground-Ho... That was a reminder that doing something unconventional can be risky and cause lots of unexpected problems. So it would probably be a good idea to also spend a lot of money on architects and engineers to make sure that everything is done properly and there's no surprises.
$120k on the plane. $5k to move it into the forest. $95k fee for not having friends with heavy equipment. $200k for making somebody else do the renovating for you. $50k on materials. $50k on markup.
Neither the weight nor size of the plane are astronomical. The square footage to renovate isn't that high either. The reason it costs so much is that it's odd and every time you pay someone else there's a huge cost associated with a one-off and everything about the project is one-off.
> $95k fee for not having friends with heavy equipment.
Of course, it's next door to, and both started by the guy who ran the now defunct evergreen aviation.
Obviously, the fact that it has been done means that it is legally possible in some jurisdictions, but it's likely to be an uphill battle--or completely impossible--elsewhere.
Communities that require newly constructed buildings to match the character of the neighborhood likely would never grant permission for an airliner house. Jurisdictions that don't have this requirement would still require building code compliance, which could be extremely difficult to achieve as the technical standards used in aviation are not comparable to those used in conventional construction or mobile homes. At minimum, you'd have major issues with insulation requirements, fire resistance, and emergency egress.
After all of this, you'd still need to find a bank willing to issue a construction loan/mortgage, and an insurer willing to cover the finished product.
$300K might be a very low-end estimate of the costs involved to make everything physically and legally proper.
Seems like quite a bit to live in a 747 in the middle of nowhere. Why not just buy an already-built $500K house in the middle of nowhere? It would be bigger and save you a whole lot of hassle.
I got quite nervous as the plane appears to be resting on a pile of wood pellets.
Airliners are merely business tools - operators have no romance for any plane.
If a 777 is even 2% more efficient than a 747, the 747 is grounded and chopped up.
The related factors are that 4 engines is more maintenance than 2 engines, the classic 747 is no longer certified for passenger use in the USA (wiring and fuel-tank inerting ADs), and ETOPS allows twin-engine flight on almost all commercially-viable oceanic routes. (ETOPS makes me nervous af.)
Source: commercially-rated airplane pilot.
The only case I can think of where an ETOPS flight had both engines fail due to something other than fuel exhaustion was BA38, and it's hard to say a quad jet would have managed better there. I can understand the gut feeling that the safety factor has been reduced, but given several decades without horror stories is it really still something to be nervous about?
It's unlikely that an airliner can maintain altitude on one engine, so the risk is high that once a problem occurs, things can go bad fast. Ditching 300 passengers in the open ocean guarantees fatalities.
I understand that non-pilots think "it's handled", but that's not really the case.
That's why the old expression "it's a 4-engine ocean" came about.
"Small Planes Over Big Oceans (ETOPS Explained)"
It’s really weird to imply that losing one engine is a ditch situation. Modern airliners can take off on one engine. ETOPS 330 certifies them for operation on one engine for 5.5 hours continuously. They may have to descend a bit from max altitude but there’s a big difference between that and ditching.
More flights have experienced fatal crashes due to pilots flying a perfectly functional airplane into the terrain, than from both engines failing. On objective evidence, you should be more worried about the pilots than the engines.
“It’s a 4-engine ocean” is indeed an old expression.
This is a super misleading technical truth. There usually is an engine out altitude where it’s most efficient to fly on a single engine. Just like there is an altitude where it’s most efficient with both engines operating. The two don’t need to be the same.
Planes don’t automatically become ETOPS certified, every plane gets tested.
The first step is to certify the type of aircraft itself, for which it is flown on a single engine for the required time of the ETOPS rating. So ETOPS-180 means 180 minutes of flying with a single engine. Not in a simulator, with a real aircraft.
The second step is that each operator also has to become ETOPS certified. You can’t just buy an ETOPS certified jet and fly it over the atlantic. There are additional requirements for crews and mechanical staff, including more regular checks of the aircrafts.
Lastly, this is all based on statistics. So operators have to publish statistics about their fleet. If say engine outs are increasing for a specific airframe and/or operator, it’s possible that their ETOPS rating goes down or is completely suspended.
There's nothing likely or unlikely about it - for an aircraft operating an ETOPS flight, the performance characteristics with one engine operative are well known, and taken into consideration when doing the mandatory diversion planning.
I’m not a pilot but isn’t that a good thing? Diverting a flight as opposed to... crashing?
Well flying is like that kind of workplace but cranked to 11.
Again I’m not a pilot but it seems like diverted planes isn’t the problem, the problem is finding a safe place to set the plane down if a failure does happen. Yes the ocean makes that difficult, but so does a lot of land.
Most of the places I can think of that I could get local government permission, and buy cheap land, to put a 747 house in place... Have a near 1:1 venn diagram overlap with places that might have a half mile dirt driveway with trees on both sides, where it would be difficult to get a truck and traditional dimension single-wide mobile home into, nevermind a 747.
This year they definitely had some issues getting it off of the playa, but your comment might imply to the unfamiliar that they didn't succeed in getting it on-playa.
There is a guy in Oregon who lives in a 727-200, but that's a lot less work to take down a road.
https://www.atlasobscura.com/places/airplane-home-in-the-woo...
I know, I tried to word my comment carefully to avoid implying that you were being intentionally misleading. I was just clarifying for the benefit of the unfamiliar
One of the people also talked about turning a second one into an AirBnb, so I think that's a great idea. It would be a very unique place to stay, so I think it would be fully booked if you're in a decent location.
But if you're curious re:prices, you can call the dealer listed on Controller.com as selling a 777. He's actually got several for sale in that neighborhood (and is super friendly, too - Eric).
On the cash front, ferry flights to the US are the biggest expense by far. A 777 burns ~$10,000 in fuel per hour, so positioning from (say) Asia to a boneyard in California adds up quickly... with crew, ferry insurance, landing fees & sundries you end up at $200-$250k. Parking runs around $3-5k per month in the desert, too.
I figure if you're starting at, say, $150k to ferry it, might as well fill it with some junk.
Ferry permits can be issued to airplanes “not airworthy and operating outside their certified range” if I am not mistaken.
Incidentally though, the FAA minimum liability coverage for a widebody is $750 million, and the policies I've seen do allow for cargo onboard (though not passengers).
Also, is it possible to buy non-airworthy ones and fix them up and sell them as air worthy ones? Or is it too expensive?
Apparently the airplane itself was free, but it cost $250k to transport it to the location of filming!
For the curious, heres the plane : https://www.google.com/maps/@12.7994926,80.2283484,166m/data...
"Un-mothballing" isn't cheap. I suppose maybe you could find one in a small, corrupt, country, but outside of that, it would be expensive.
There is a whole industry around salvaging old jet aircraft for parts, movie sets, furniture, etc.
An old 747 fuselage would be well under a million. Even less for 727s and 737-200s.
I can’t imagine them fixing up a well scavenged airframe, I imagine they took a nice, but retired frame, blew it up, and sent it back to the yard.
Of course the internals would be scrapped ahead of time, but why not airworthy? Tons of these things sitting in the desert.
Makes me think of someone using an insured rental car to shoot the big scene of their breakout movie
(but not millions high).
https://www.aircargonews.net/airlines/iata/iata-outlook-carg...