After nearly a decade of anticipation, John Travolta’s former Boeing 707 is on the move to its final destination—a public display at the Historical Aircraft Restoration Society (HARS) Aviation Museum at Australia’s Shellharbour Airport (YSHL).
The actor, pilot, and Living Legends of Aviation inductee—also a former ambassador for Qantas Airways and Bombardier’s Learjet, Challenger, and Global business aircraft—is not flying the luxury jet, which was the original plan when he donated it to HARS in 2017. Instead, a crew of three aircraft restoration specialists disassembled the aircraft at Brunswick Golden Isles Airport (KBQK) in Georgia and loaded it on a ship this week.
The plane is scheduled to arrive in Australia, where it will be reassembled for display, by early May, HARS said Monday. Some components, such as the engines and tail fin, have already been shipped.
Though the aircraft is not in flying shape, Travolta in an earlier statement said he flew a Lockheed L-1049 Super Constellation that HARS “restored to flying condition from almost nothing.”
Nicknamed “Connie,” it is the last remaining flying example of that model.
“The aircraft currently requires a lot of work to be restored to a safe flying state and having seen first hand the dedication and passion of people at HARS, I have no doubt this beautiful and historical aircraft will be flying again,” Travolta said.
Travolta and Aviation
Travolta purchased the aircraft—a 707-138B and the last of 13 100-series aircraft built specially for Qantas in 1964—in 1998 after it was retired. The 100-series was the first Boeing offered to airlines. It paired a relatively low maximum takeoff weight of 250,000 pounds with engines generating 18,000 pounds of thrust, earning it the nickname “Hotrod.”
The actor named the plane Jett Clipper Ella in honor of two of his three children and secured tail number N707JT, which contains his initials. He outfitted it with a Qantas livery and an array of luxury amenities, including an entertainment area and two bedrooms.
Travolta owns a Challenger 601 and has previously flown the Beechcraft Bonanza, Cirrus SR22, Dassault Falcon 900, Cessna Citation ISP, and Gulfstream II. He is further rated for the Boeing 747, Hawker 125, British Vampire Jet, Canadair CL-41 Tebuan, and Lear 24, 25, and 36. The Hollywood star survived a total electrical system failure while flying his G-II in the 1990s.
According to HARS, Travolta knows several members personally and agreed to donate the aircraft—which he initially planned to sell for scrap—due to its high maintenance cost. Engineers who inspected the 707 in Georgia reported that “we felt like we could just fuel it up and fly it home.”
“However an FAA [airworthiness directive] which was the result of an accident at Ventura [California] when a former PanAm 707 physically lost an engine on takeoff meant the pylons had to be inspected,” HARS wrote in a December Facebook post.
Though the FAA granted clearance for a one-time flight to Georgia, it rejected a ferry flight to Australia, forcing HARS to comply with the requirements in the AD. After that, the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and the Georgia-based maintenance team was depleted. As a result, the work needed to meet the FAA’s demands could have stretched until 2027 or 2028.
“Eventually it was accepted that given the many years it would take before any work could be done on the aircraft, the best course of action was to carefully dismantle it and ship it to HARS,” the museum wrote.
Breaking It Down
In 2024, HARS enlisted the small team at Worldwide Aircraft Recovery in Georgia for the painstaking task of dismantling Travolta’s 707. The company says it has relocated thousands of civilian and military aircraft, including the Lockheed A-12, SR-71, and F-16 and Boeing C-17, to museums, military installations, and other locations.
A team from Australia worked with Georgia’s Stambaugh Aviation to remove flaps, ailerons, panels, and other small parts. After that, Worldwide Aircraft Recovery got to work separating the wings from the fuselage, starting by preparing the wing split area.
“For those of you that have not been in the wing of a 707, think of the smallest area you can fit and work in there for hours and hours,” the company said in a January update.
By February, engineers had removed the aircraft’s landing gear and lowered it onto a trailer. After about two months working inside the split, it came time to remove the wings. According to Worldwide, personnel pulled 2,400 bolts from just the top and bottom of the left wing.
On Sunday, the company said all parts had been delivered to the port for shipping.
“We are proud that we were able to save this aircraft for HARS,” it said. “Sadly it could not fly there but the folks there will take great care of it for years to come.”
After arriving in Australia, the aircraft will be moved to Shellharbour Airport, where HARS engineers will rebuild it.
Will It Fly Again?
HARS in June said it hopes to return the 707 “hopefully to taxi standard and maybe even to flying status.”
“Let us see how far we can go—certainly if it can be made airworthy—and for sure, our engineers are more than qualified and eager to make that happen,” it said in December.
The group has a track record of pulling off the improbable.
Beyond the Super Constellation, HARS has restored to airworthy status a fleet of Douglas DC-3s, two of the three original de Havilland DHC-4 Caribous, the Cessna 310-B, Lockheed SP-2H, and a pair of P-2 Neptunes. Others, including a Boeing 747-438, are kept taxiable or on static displays.
HARS also has plenty of experience with the 707. It was part of the team that restored another 707-138B—the first of the 13 delivered to Qantas—for the Qantas Founders Museum (QFM) in Longreach, Australia.
“When they arrived, the locals were more than skeptical of them being able to get the aircraft back into airworthy condition,” HARS wrote in 2023. “[A HARS engineer] stated that was like waving a red rag at a bull. The result is that aircraft (now VH-XBA) resides at the QFM in Longreach.”
Travolta in his statement said he believes the jet will “continue to fly well into the future.” According to HARS, the actor is assisting with a “film release and maybe a documentary” about the project.