Hotels Archives - Golf Hotel Whiskey

The Flying W Airport Resort: Not your granddad’s airport

General Aviation News has brought our attention to the Flying W Airport Resort – a general aviation airport like no other because it contains Western theme buildings, a 28-room on-airport motel and an airplane-shaped swimming pool for the whole family to enjoy.

So why does this airport have a swimming pool and other resort like amenities? Simply stated, the Flying W Airport Resort is an important center of recreation and social life in this fast suburbanizing farming region to the east of Philadelphia (actually, the airport resort is located in New Jersey). Locals pay a seasonal pool membership ($300 for single membership to $600 for a family of four) to enjoy the pool, outdoor pavilion, Tiki bar, Snack Shack and summertime outdoor concerts plus the airport resort is rented as a venue for special events.

The airport resort naturally has a flying school with eight aircraft that come with attractive rental prices plus there are regular aviation related social events. Members of the airport resort’s flying club pay an “aviator social club member fee” of just $40.50 per month to help defray fixed costs (renter’s insurance is also required).

However and according to the author (who first visited in 1966), the airport resort’s nice “white tablecloth” restaurant won’t be operating this year except for special events and neither will the adjacent bar (which for years had been marketed for after-softball team gatherings). The Runway Café in the flight school/ops lobby has also closed due to its proprietor’s passing.

Nevertheless, the poolside Snack Shack is open to pilots and clearly the airport resort or recreation center concept serving a surrounding region is a good model for keeping an otherwise quiet and no doubt struggling general aviation airport open for the whole family to enjoy.

Exotic Swedish hotels: The Jumbo Stay

The next time you visit Sweden, you might want to consider spending the night in a defunct silver mine, a former prison and for aviation buffs: A grounded jumbo jet. In this recent video, the Wall Street Journal’s Dan Michaels profiled the Jumbo Stay at the Stockholm Arlanda Airport (along with two other even more exotic accommodation options).

Specifically, the Jumbo Stay is a Boeing 747 that flew for Pan Am and other airlines until it was retired in 2002 and acquired by a local entrepreneur at a bankruptcy auction two years ago. Today, the Jumbo Stay offers 27 guests rooms plus a hostel where bunks go for $60 a night. Guests also have the option of more luxurious suites in the cockpit and tail of the aircraft that go for as much as $500 a night.

It should also be noted that CNN has excellent profile of the Jumbo Stay as well:

Getaway for aviation buffs

Already discovered by a few other Aviation bloggers, the Hotel Costa Verde in Costa Rica offers two unique attractions for aviation buffs. The first attraction is the El Avion restaurant and bar which is housed in a Fairchild C-123 left over from CIA efforts to supply the Contras with weapons (In fact, the plane was one of two C-123 used to supply the Contras with the other plane having been shot down and its pilot captured by the Sandinistas – beginning the chain of events that lead to the Iran-Contra scandal). The aircraft was purchased for US$3,000 in 2000 and had to be disassembled and hauled in pieces to the hotel site on top of a mountain.

The hotel’s other attraction is the 727 Fuselage Home – a two bedroom suite housed in a vintage 1965 Boeing 727 airframe that previously flew for South Africa Air and Avianca Airlines (Colombia). Rates for the Fuselage Home are US$300.00 daily plus tax until November 17, 2009.

Combined with beautiful white sand beaches, sports fishing and unique ecotourism type activities – the Hotel Costa Verde is the perfect holiday retreat for aviation buffs.

Hotel in a 747

The Jumbo Hostel at Stockholm airport is a real 747 converted into a hotel. How cool is that? I want to fly to Stockholm just to stay there. There are even two beds in the cockpit. (Hat tip and more photos: Inhabit.)

The hotel has 25 rooms with three bunk beds in each one. There is also a lounge. All the rooms have views out over the airport so it’s excellent for plane spotters and aviation enthusiasts.

There’s another disused 747 at Lelystad Aviodrome museum but you can only walk through it, not sleep in it. (See Lelystad Aerodrome review).