Super Connie for Sale

In the Globe and Mail today, a short reference was made to a Lockheed Super Constellation passenger aircraft, otherwise known as a Connie. The Connie was a four-engine propeller aircraft built in California by Lockheed in the 1940s and 1950s. Over 800 were build, and the distintive and elegant aircraft flew for nearly 40 years, for both military and commercial purposes.

The specific model in the article was built in 1953 for Trans Canada Airlines, and is perhaps the last surviving model in Canada - for now. The private owner sold it to the Seattle Museum of Flight recently, but was denied an export permit by the Canadian Cultural Property Export Review Board for three months. Several Canadian aviation organizations had protested the sale, and after an independent evaluation the Review Board put a temporary hold on the export deeming it "to be of 'significant' cultural and historical value to Canada." This is intended to provide time for a Canadian group to raise sufficient funds to purchase the Connie at fair value, if possible.

Of course, there are at least two sides of the story. From the United States, we have The Constellation Survivor Website with their interpretation of this recent news, and in Canada a petition at Canadian Super Connie to prevent the export, and the Toronto Aerospace Museum's own record of events.