Lufthansa Is Upcycling & Turning An Old Plane Into Furniture & Household Goods

by SharonKurheg

There’s lots of talk about the aviation industry and how it plays into the environment. Airlines have used lots of crazy ways to make planes lighter to help save on fuel. They’ve figured out the best place to be in the air to maximize fuel efficiency. Individual countries have even started talking about ways to have airlines to make their carbon footprint smaller.

German airline Lufthansa though, is thinking outside the box, and instead of letting an A340-600 rot in an aviation graveyard, it’s turned it into a bunch of different products for household use.

When the A340s were originally launched, the Airbus models were, at about 247 feet, the longest passenger aircraft in the world. They held about 380 passengers. And now think about this –  92% of one of those A340s’ length, inside and out, was recycled for the Lufthansa Upcycling Collection.

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It took 10 weeks to dismantle the aircraft into sizes that could be easily worked on by the design and construction teams.  But once that was done, they managed to make:

  • Over 35,000 key tags (using 250 square meters of aluminum)
  • Heated Pillows
  • Gym Bags (“…used to be a genuine Lufthansa Business Class blanket and a headrest cover in its previous life”)
  • Messenger backpacks
  • Picnic blankets
  • “Flying coffee tables” (“…is made from an original flap.”)
  • Toiletries bags
  • Messenger bags
  • Coffee tables (“…was made in precision work from the side panel of the aircraft”)
  • Wallets
  • Aircraft window whisky bar (“…It’s quite fascinating to think that vast areas of the world were observed through these very windows between 2006 and 2016. Now, converted and fitted out with boxes made of oak wood, the high-quality parts of the aircraft have been given a new purpose.”)
  • Glass coffee table
  • Window wall clock

A handful of the items are already sold out, but plenty of them are still available on Lufthansa’s website.

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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary

2 comments

Aaron October 15, 2019 - 7:48 pm

Sadly, the LH store does not deliver to North America.

Reply
SharonKurheg October 15, 2019 - 9:34 pm

For those of us living in the U.S., well poop. For those who live in a place where they’ll ship to, lucky you! 🙂

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