747 Turned Into A Jumbo Hostel

Some people follow, and others lead. Oscar Dios, owner of the hostel Uppsala Vandrarhem och Hotell, in Uppsala is in the latter category. He heard that there was a dead Boeing 747-200 sitting at Arlanda Airport in Sweden. The craft was run by Transjet to fly Muslim pilgrims to Mecca. Dios saw an opportunity to get his hostel business into some coveted airport space and decided to purchase the 747 and convert it into a low-cost hotel.

Surprisingly when he went to the authorities of Sigtuna, the town that runs the area around Arlanda Airport, they accepted his pitch to place the hotel at the entrance of the airport on top of a concrete foundation with the landing gear tied to steel cradles. The real problems with the transfer of the 747 to a hotel came when remodeling began. Dios had to remove the 450 seats in order to create 25 tiny rooms. He had to dismantle and sanitize the interior, rewire the plane, redo all the plumbing and install a new climate control system. If you’ve never been on a plane before then you should know that the windows cannot be opened. This would make the rooms a bit too stuffy.

Eventually he got it all to work out, even following all the building codes and laws required by Sweden. And now the Jumbo Hostel is being moved to its final resting place with plans to start taking bookings in December. Now you just have to hope that a bag of peanuts and some Sprite is enough to satiate your hunger while you stay overnight at the hotel. This does make me question who would want to get off an airplane only to stay the night in one. Unless there are sexy stewardesses fulfilling mile high club fantasies I’m not sure I’ll be on board.