Lockheed Constellation L-1649A Starliner

The L-1649A Starliner grew out of a more ambitious project that never flew. To answer the Douglas DC-7C Seven Seas, Lockheed drew up the L-1449: four 5500 hp Pratt & Whitney PT2G-3 turboprops, a new 46 m wing and a fuselage about 140 cm longer than the L-1049 series, with a planned maximum takeoff weight of 79,000 kg. On 30 September 1954 Lockheed told TWA the aircraft would keep the 1049-series fuselage, and in December Hughes Tool Company ordered 25, even though TWA's own figures said it would lose money with every seat filled. Early in 1955 the L-1549, a further 100 cm longer and with an 85,000 kg maximum weight, presumably still with the same turboprops, replaced it on the drawing board.

When Pratt & Whitney dropped the PT2 in March 1955, over expected unreliability, high specific fuel consumption and high operating costs, Lockheed offered an L-1549 with Allison turboprops. Manufacturer and airline settled instead on a piston-engine solution, the L-1649, which took the L-1449's place in the contract. In April 1955 Lockheed even told TWA it wanted to drop that as well, but Hughes refused. The final design combined the L-1049G fuselage, the new wing and four Wright R-3350 988 TC18-EA-2 turbo-compound radials, which let it fly nonstop from California to Europe. Lockheed promised 58 passengers over 10,500 km at 560 km/h, and a Paris–New York trip three hours faster than the DC-7C. Timetables were less dramatic: in January 1958 Pan American scheduled its DC-7C from Orly to Idlewild in 14 hr 15 min, and TWA its 1649 in 14 hr 50 min.

The prototype, registered N1649, first flew on 11 October 1956 and remained Lockheed property until the early 1970s, when it was sold in Japan. The Burbank, California, plant built Starliners from 1956 to 1958: 44 in all, prototype included. A turboprop L-1649B was also proposed but not built.

Airline service began on 1 June 1957 with a TWA flight from New York to London and Frankfurt. In September 1957 a Starliner made the first nonstop flight from Los Angeles to London under the airline's chief pilot, Bob Buck, who later described it in a long magazine article; that 29 September trip took 18 hours 32 minutes for about 8,720 km. TWA named its aircraft “Jetstreams” and used them on its longer domestic routes and from New York to Europe and beyond. In July 1958 it scheduled 60 weekly flights from Europe to New York, 30 of them by L-1649: seven nonstops from Paris, five from London, four from Frankfurt, two each from Madrid, Lisbon and Geneva, one from Zurich and one from Rome. Three more a week flew the polar route between Europe and California, sometimes nonstop.

Boeing 707s replaced TWA's last transatlantic passenger L-1649 in October 1961, and in December 1962 707s and Convair 880s pushed it off domestic scheduled services too. In the early 1960s Lockheed converted twelve TWA Starliners into freighters, which flew cargo across the Atlantic until 1964 and within the United States until 1967.

Air France bought ten and was the only airline to market the aircraft by name, as the “Super Starliner”. Its transatlantic services ran from August 1957 to September 1960, when the 707 took over. From April 1958 its L-1649s linked Paris and Tokyo via Anchorage, though they were not allowed to fly to the US west coast. In summer 1959 it scheduled 22 weekly nonstops from Orly to Idlewild, four of which continued to Mexico City, plus two a week from Orly to Chicago Midway via Montreal. The twice-weekly Orly–Anchorage–Tokyo service was timetabled at 30 hr 45 min, against 42 hr 20 min for the fastest L-1049G via India and 32 hr 00 min for BOAC's Comet from London to Tokyo, also via India.

Lufthansa was the last airline to buy new Starliners: four, marketed as “Super Stars” and flown on its transatlantic routes. They were delivered nonstop from the Burbank factory to Hamburg, and in summer 1959 Lufthansa scheduled nonstops to New York from Frankfurt, Düsseldorf and Orly. When the 707 replaced them on the Atlantic in 1960, Lockheed converted two into freighters. Linee Aeree Italiane ordered four but did not take them after its merger with Alitalia in October 1957; Alitalia had already accepted the DC-7C and had no interest, so they went to TWA in 1958. Varig ordered two and switched the order to two L-1049Gs. The Starliner outranged its rival, but it was expensive, about three million dollars, and entered service a year later; the DC-7C sold far more airframes.

In the 1960s Alaska Airlines flew two Starliners on Military Air Transport Service contracts, other operators used them for charters, and in the 1970s a handful hauled cargo in Alaska. By the early 1980s none remained in commercial service. Two accidents marked its career: on 26 June 1959 TWA Flight 891 crashed after a lightning strike on departure from Milan Malpensa, killing all 68 on board, and on 10 May 1961 Air France Flight 406, the “De Grasse”, broke up over the Sahara after an empennage failure thought to have been caused by an explosive device, killing all 78. The former TWA N7301C was written off at Bogotá on 18 December 1966 while flying for Aerocondor Colombia.

N7316C (c/n 1018), at Auburn-Lewiston Airport in Maine, underwent a Lufthansa restoration to flying condition from 2007, with a first flight planned for 2017 or 2018. After spending 150 million euros, the airline announced in March 2018 that it was moving the work to Germany and no longer planned commercial flights; in February 2021 the aircraft moved from storage in Bremen harbour to Paderborn-Lippstadt airport, and by July 2022 it appeared on the Lufthansa Berlin Foundation's website. N8083H (c/n 1038), at the same airfield as a parts donor, was restored in TWA's 1950s livery and serves as the cocktail lounge of the TWA Hotel, opened on 15 May 2019 in the former TWA terminal at John F. Kennedy Airport. N974R (c/n 1040) is displayed outside the Fantasy of Flight museum in Polk City, Florida, and ZS-DVJ (c/n 1042), in Trek Airways colours, is part of the South African Airways Museum Society's static display at Rand Airport.

It carried a crew of five and up to 99 passengers. It was 35.41 m long, spanned 46 m and stood 7.54 m high, with a wing area of 172 m²; it weighed 41,569 kg empty and 70,808 kg at maximum takeoff. Each of its four 18-cylinder Wright R-3350s gave 3,400 hp (2,500 kW) and turned a three-bladed Hamilton Standard Hydromatic 43H60 propeller 5.13 m across. It reached 607 km/h at 5,669 m, cruised at 470 km/h, had a 7,200 m service ceiling and covered 7,950 km with an 8,845 kg payload or 9,946 km with 3,629 kg.