The former Qantas and John Travolta Boeing 707 is dismantled in Georgia prior to shipping to Australia. Photo: Worldwide Aircraft Recovery.
The fuselage and wings of a historic former Qantas airliner which was owned by actor John Travolta have embarked on their final journey back to Australia.
The Boeing 707-138B has been dismantled over the past few months in the US in preparation for it to be shipped to the Historical Aircraft Restoration Society (HARS) based at Shellharbour Airport near Wollongong.
An engine and pylon from the aircraft arrived at HARS in June and were put on display at the museum’s Tarmac Day that month, while the tail fin arrived late last year.
When the fuselage arrives at Port Kembla in May, it will be reunited with the other parts that have already arrived, and assembled for display alongside a former Qantas Boeing 747-400, and a Lockheed Constellation painted in a partial Qantas colour scheme.
The aircraft was built at Boeing’s Seattle facility in the US in 1964. It was delivered to the airline on 10 September that year registered as VH-EBM ‘City of Launceston’, and operated its first revenue service from Sydney to Tokyo on 2 October.
The 707-138B was a unique model for Qantas, being 3.3 metres shorter than the standard 707-100 version which gave it superior airfield performance and longer range, and only 13 were built.
But the aircraft had a relatively short service life with Qantas as the larger and more powerful 707-338 model entered service, and ‘EBM’ was withdrawn from service in April 1968.
It was subsequently sold to US airline Braniff International, and later flew with Tracinda in the UK, and in Saudi Arabia with TAG where it was refurbished with a luxurious VIP interior which includes two bedrooms, a bathroom and lounge areas.
The 707 was later stored at Las Vegas, before John Travolta acquired it in May 1998 after he had rented it a couple of times to commute back and forth across the Atlantic from his home in Florida for movie projects.
“I said: ‘I’m not going to be able to go to Berlin for the weekend and be ready for work on Monday if I don’t have a plane that at least has a bedroom,’” he said in a 2013 interview.
“So they found one – they found this plane. That was the deal, so they rented it for me. I fell in love with it, because on departure I went into the bedroom, I fell asleep, and arrived in Berlin so rested it was as though I had never travelled at all.”
The aircraft – appropriately registered N707JT and named ‘Jett Clipper Ella’ – was repainted in Qantas livery in 2002 for a marketing campaign, and Travolta subsequently retained the livery and became an ambassador for the airline, regularly appearing at airline events around the world.
But the cost of operating the aging and unique aircraft was adding up and, with longer ranging and much more economical business jets readily available, by 2014 the 707 was rarely being used.
In May 2017 Travolta announced he would donate the 707 to HARS, and the aircraft was ferried to Brunswick in Georgia for restoration work prior to a planned trans-Pacific delivery.
“As many of you will know, flying is a passion of mine and I am just so grateful to be fortunate enough to count many hours flying such a beautiful aircraft,” Travolta said at the time.
“HARS have an impressive track record of restoring historical aircraft and I have personally flown in a Super Constellation that they restored to flying condition from almost nothing.”
The aircraft was to have been flown from the US to Shellharbour by Travolta himself in November 2019, but delays in granting a temporary airworthiness certificate for the aircraft, and the costs involved in returning it to an airworthiness standard saw that plan abandoned.
“The initial plan was sound,” a HARS social media post from June 2025 reads.
“The aircraft was given an FAA clearance for a one-time flight to the maintenance facility in Georgia. When HARS engineers visited to inspect the aircraft, their report was, ‘we felt like we could just fuel it up and fly it home’.
“Negotiations with the FAA that this aircraft had far fewer hours on it than the 707 fleet generally were rejected and a ferry flight to HARS was not on the cards,” it said.
“And then COVID hit. The workforce went away, and when COVID went away, there was so much work for the maintenance company that the HARS 707 was relegated to the back of the queue.
“Eventually it was accepted that, given the many years it would take before any work could be done on the aircraft, the best course of action was to carefully dismantle it and ship it to HARS at Shellharbour where it could be assembled and worked on by our expert engineers.”
The ship carrying the aircraft is expected to arrive at Port Kembla on or about 9 May, and after clearing customs, the fuselage and wings will be trucked the 15 km by road to HARS for reassembly.
