Elvis’ plane has left the desert. Finally. And much like the musical legacy of the King of Rock ’n’ Roll, whose rabid fans were often alerted that “Elvis has left the building, ”Presley’s 1962 Lockheed 1329 JetStar lives on. Just not in its original form.
Florida YouTube personality James Webb, known for his popular Jimmy’s World videos, successfully bid $234,000 to acquire the dilapidated and engineless JetStar at Mecum’s annual Kissimmee Auction in January, 2023. What Webb was going to do with it was anyone’s guess at the time, but in the last six weeks his plans have unfolded on YouTube and in the news media.
“I knew it was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” Webb tells Fox 13 Tampa Bay. “And the whole time I was never quite sure if this was the best choice or the worst choice of my life.”
Lockheed’s JetStar was the executive jet of choice for countless A-listers, dignitaries, and celebrities. It was powered by four engines, contained in pods mounted at the rear of the fuselage, that together provided a maximum speed of around 565 mph. Range was 2500 miles. Inside, there was room for 8 to 10 passengers to ride in style, serviced by two pilots and a cabin attendant.
About 200 JetStars were produced at Lockheed’s Marietta, Georgia, facility. Presley bought this one, registered with the FAA as N-20TF, from Omni Aircraft Sales, Inc. on December 22, 1976. He paid a whopping $840,000, the equivalent of about $4.4 million today.
No stranger to luxury aircraft, the King already owned a custom Convair 880 that he named “Lisa Marie,” after his daughter, and another JetStar. Those planes are currently on display at Graceland, Presley’s mansion in Memphis, Tennessee.
The interior of N-20TF leaves little doubt that it once belonged to Elvis, resplendent in wood paneling and red velvet upholstery with hardware finished in gold. Six plush chairs swivel and recline, and there’s also a couch. An onboard entertainment system is tucked away in a media cabinet and features a television, RCA VCR player, and audio cassette player, and there are headphone ports and audio controls at every seat. The galley contains a meal-prep area (complete with a Kenmore microwave and beverage dispenser) and storage. A restroom is in the rear of the jet.
As luxurious as the JetStar is (er, was), Presley didn’t own it long, selling it not six months later, in the spring of 1977. According to Mecum, the plane ended up with a Saudi Arabian company but was eventually moved to Roswell International Air Center (ROW) in Roswell, New Mexico, where it resided for decades.
The JetStar has been offered at auction at least three times, and Webb says his $234K bid was deemed the winner this January after a higher bid fell through. That’s when his adventure began.
Webb traveled to New Mexico to check out his new acquisition a couple of weeks ago and revealed his obvious admiration for both planes and Elvis in a video on his YouTube channel.
During the 22-minute video, Webb acts like a kid in a candy store, excitedly discovering that many of its interior features still work, the cockpit controls light up, and the landing lights, taxi lights, and beacon still function.
“The lights work!”
“The microwave works! Yes!”
“This is my favorite thing EVER!”
“I’m just beside myself with excitement … if you couldn’t tell.”
A week later, Webb followed with a second video in which he invites Roswell’s Aerodesign Services to answer the question: “Will it ever fly again?” The answer blew his mind, and it didn’t take long to realize the news wasn’t going to be good.
“This is going to be a nightmare, if it’s even possible,” says Aerodesign’s Ryan Zaharia while inspecting the exterior of the plane. “… It would be a miracle. I’ve never seen an aircraft so damaged in my life.”
After a full inspection, Ryan takes to the whiteboard and shares the results: Inspections, $80K; testing, $20K; stripping/painting, $120K; panel and rivet replacement, $75K; flight control panels ($35K each x 9 panels), $450K; landing gear ($120K each x 3), $360K; brakes ($6K per brake pad, two on each), $24K; fuel tanks ($5K x 2), $10K; avionics/electrical, $1.5 million; Auxiliary Power Unit (APU), $180K; miscellaneous hardware, hoses, and fittings, $100K; four JT12 engines (“If the stars align and you can find them”), $2.2 million; flight testing, $100K; and mandatory Airworthy Directives, $450K.
Grand total: $5.7 million.
“I’m numb,” Webb says.
Zaharia then delivers the final blow. Even if the plane were made functional again, current noise regulations wouldn’t allow it to fly.
“It’s too loud to even start up and run,” he says. “They make ‘hush kits’ to reduce noise, but they don’t make them for your aircraft.”
In other words, as Webb acknowledges, this cost analysis doesn’t matter.
“That’s true,” Zaharia says. “There’s no possible way that plane is flying.”
Webb turns to the camera: “Plan A was to get the airplane flying again … It’s not going to fly again. Plan B: What are we going to do with this thing?”
Before he could answer that question, the JetStar had to be disassembled so it could be hauled cross-country to Florida. It was easy to watch the process through a couple of Instagram accounts: Webb’s (therealjimmysworld) and the hauling company’s (gns_trucking379).
Once in Florida, Webb chatted with members of the media, which was given access to the plane in a warehouse in Plant City. Webb’s next big idea, it appears, is to turn Elvis’ jet into a giant, roadworthy vehicle that will tour the country.
“We’re going to take an RV chassis, take the house part of the RV off, put [the plane] on that, so this can drive around,” Webb tells FOX 13. “It would be like the Elvis Mobile. We’re going to take it to Las Vegas, maybe Graceland.”
Then he stops and considers. “They kicked us out when we were [at Graceland] trying to bring it here. That’s another story.”
Webb—wearing a t-shirt that reads, “What could go wrong?”—says he also plans to cut the wings and fuel tanks into pieces and sell them as Elvis memorabilia. You can understand why he’d like to recoup some of what he spent to buy a plane that doesn’t—can’t, legally—fly.
“This was, ironically, more expensive than my house,” he admits. “How crazy is that?”
Depends on how much you love The King.
