Which Super Constellation is displayed in Munich in Lufthansa colours?

Next to Munich international airport a Lockheed Super Constellation is displayed in Lufthansa colours, bearing the registration D-ALEM. That registration recalls the German airline's first long-range aircraft, from 1955. However, the aircraft in Munich is not that one: its last registration was F-BHML, a French registration, and it was painted to represent the D-ALEM.

The Super Constellation that actually served Lufthansa under that registration is an L-1049G, construction number 4603, built in 1955. It is preserved on static display in Hangar One of the Lufthansa group, at Frankfurt Airport. The L-1049G was the version with more powerful Turbo-Compound engines that Lockheed developed to cross the Atlantic non-stop, something the L-1049C and L-1049E often could not manage from Europe to New York against headwinds; it could carry between 71 and 95 passengers.

Lufthansa is among the historic operators of the Constellation, alongside TWA, Air France, KLM and Iberia, and its relationship with the family is not limited to these two aircraft. In 2007, the Deutsche Lufthansa Berlin Foundation bought two L-1649A Starliners at auction in Auburn, Maine, and Lufthansa Technik North America worked on one of them, N7316C, with the idea of returning it to flight; in 2018 the airline announced its transfer to Germany, and by late 2019 the plan was to restore it for static display in a museum. The Munich example is, therefore, one more piece of that memory: a Super Constellation of different origin dressed as the pioneer of the German intercontinental fleet.