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Last existing Lufthansa Boeing 707-430 at Aviationtag
Unfortunately this Aviationtag edition is sold out already - just a couple of hours after launch. You can still try your luck at one of our Aviationtag retails partners around the globe. One way or another, we would still like to write a bit about the history of the D-ABOD in todays' blog post.
The Boeing 707-430 sporting registration D-ABOD and manufacturer serial number (MSN) 17720 was delivered to Lufthansa on 24 April 1960, after taking to the skies for its maiden flight on 5 April 1960. It was with this plane christened "Frankfurt" that the airline heralded in the jet age in Germany, enabling Lufthansa to offer far faster journeys than with the Lockheed L-1649A Starliner it had previously used. With 148 passengers, it was also able to transport considerably more passengers.
After 15 years of service flying between Tokyo, São Paulo and San Francisco, the Boeing 707 was retired and parked at Hamburg Airport from 30 April 1975 – inter alia under the registrations D-ABOB and D-AFHG.
31 December 1984 marked the end of the entire Boeing 707 era at Lufthansa; up until then, a total of 24 aircraft of the type Boeing 707 and eight of the shorter Boeing 720 had graced the skies with the iconic yellow crane on their tailplane. The very first Lufthansa Boeing 707 sporting registration D-ABOB and christened "Hamburg" had been sold in 1976 due to corrosion and disappeared in Africa. The D-ABOB even made Lufthansa the launch customer for the 707-430 model.
In 1976, the plane flew to Munich Riem for the film "Twilight's Last Gleaming" starring Burt Lancaster. For this film, the left side of the fuselage was painted in the colours of Air Force One. Our D-ABOD, however, was parked at Hamburg Airport for more than 45 years and was bought by it for the symbolic price of one Euro on the occasion of the "Hamburg Airport Classics" airshow in the summer of 1999, serving as a museum exhibit, ground transporter and training plane. Sporting the new inscription "Hamburg Airport" and with the help of the Hamburg Airport Friends association, the B707 was used for several film shoots, appearing in the German public television production "Deutschlandspiel" (2002), as well as in the film comedy "Bend it like Beckham" (2001), and "Im Schatten der Macht" (2003). The airport fire service also used the plane as a training station and the German Federal Police trained search dogs in the aircraft. Aircraft de-icers even practised their trade on the exhibit, which was a popular eye-catcher.
In June 2021, Hamburg Airport then decided to scrap the jet and auction off relevant aircraft parts.
Even the fundraising campaign by the "Verein zur Rettung der Boeing 707 D-ABOD" (Association to Save the Boeing 707 D-ABOD) unfortunately could not help the airport to continue to meet the costs.
So we are all the more thrilled to be able to save a piece of this historic aircraft and bring parts of the skin of the very last Boeing 707-430 home to you!
This wonderful and historic edition sold out in a few hours, however maybe you are interested in one of our other Aviationtags from the Classic Collection? We have a DC-3 Candy Bomber, the popular Super Guppy Turbines #1 as well as the former NASA and US AIr Force Beechcraft 18 in the collection.
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