Turbulent journey for Boeing
Johnny Palmer, owner of Bath’s Warleigh Weir, has said his experience of driving a Boeing 727 down the motorway was “absolute chaos”.
The tech entrepreneur discovered the 1970s private jet in an “aircraft graveyard” in the Cotswolds and decided to “upcycle” it into an office for his company Pytch.
The plane was built in 1968 and used by Japan Airlines before it went into private ownership in the mid 1970s. New, it would have cost £40m but (as it was lacking wings and an engine) Johnny got a deal at £100,000.
After months of planning, on Saturday the wingless and tailless fuselage was strapped to a lorry and driven down the M4, M5 and M32 from Kemble in Gloucestershire to Palmer’s Brislington base.
Johnny, 38, said: “It was absolute chaos, the whole thing! The trailer went through a sinkhole in the Tarmac and we got stuck at some of the corners and junctions.
“There were some hairy moments. Such as when the police refused for us to use the planned route, when it scraped under a motorway bridge and when emergency services had to get past us.”
A TV show, live-streamed on Youtube, followed the jet’s progress from start to finish and crowds turned out along the route to watch the convoy pass by.
Just 300 yards from its final destination, a van parked just before a tight right-hand turn stopped the lorry in its tracks and had to be lifted out of the way.
Eventually, roughly seven hours after it left Kemble, the Boeing 727 was delivered to its final resting place in Palmer’s business park.
On Sunday, it was lifted into position by “two giant cranes” ready for the nose cone to be reattached.
Johhny said: “To see it being a real thing in the real world after working on it for months, it just made me grin from ear to ear.
“When I finally saw it in place I was blown away - it is utterly enormous, especially as we have rested it on a structure which means the aircraft is over seven metres high.”
The jet will be brought back to its 1970s splendour without a trace of modern technology, the entrepreneur said.