A Vintage TWA Plane is in Times Square En Route to Become Cocktail Lounge at New TWA Hotel

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The TWA Hotel‘s 1958 Constellation airplane is on the move again, this time making a stop in Times Square as it travels through Manhattan on a tour in celebration of the hotel’s imminent opening. In October of 2018, “Connie,” as the vintage plane is affectionately named, journeyed from Maine to JFK Airport where it has been undergoing a major makeover to convert the fuselage into a retro cocktail lounge for the TWA Hotel. On Friday, the 116-foot long plane was escorted from JFK Airport up 6th Avenue, through Columbus Circle and down Seventh Avenue to the pedestrian plaza in Times Square, the same spot where a billboard advertising the plane once stood in the 1950s.

In 1955, when the Constellation airplanes first hit the scene and were flown by TWA, the airline advertised them with an eight-story billboard topped by a two-fifths scale Connie model with a working propeller in Times Square. Connie’s journey through New York City aboard a Worldwide Aircraft Recovery, Ltd. trailer is being documented for a forthcoming documentary by Peter Rosen titled The Rebirth of the TWA Flight Center. Rosen previously directed a 2016 documentary about Eero Saarinen, the architect who designed the 1962 TWA Flight Center which is at the center of the new hotel.

Advertisement for TWA Lockheed Super Constellation in Times Square 1959, photo by Ken Peacock. Photo courtesy TWA Hotel.

The fuselage of the plane will be in on view in Times Square at Broadway and 45th Street now through Sunday, March 24th. The cocktail lounge will open with the TWA Hotel, which is currently accepting bookings, on May 15th. Visitors will even got to check out the restored the cockpit of the plane which has authentic, flippable switches and controls.