SEATTLE -- For years the first Boeing 747 ever built sat outside Seattle's Museum of Flight. Faded, neglected. Hardly looking like the jet that revolutionized air travel with its first flight in '69, when the world's first jumbo jet took to the skies.
"For a long time it was the ugly duckling. It had moss growing on it and when you walked into the airplane it just...smelled terrible. Moldy. But it's kinda the Queen of the Sky again now," said Tom Elliott, one of the volunteers who has been helping refurbish the jet. The 'Queen' -- also known as number 1 -- just got a massive makeover. Elliott and Dennis Dhein are two Boeing retirees who helped spearhead the massive effort.
"There were some times when it was just like, 'oh my gosh, what is, you know, what are we into here'?" Dhein laughed.
New paint went on over the summer. The names of the original pilots among the details carefully restored. The interior two years ago was tattered and torn. Volunteers rebuilt the spiral staircase to the swanky upper lounge, reupholstered the chairs, and painted the cockpit's instrument panel.
But some of the pieces of the jet were left as is: a pink pencil sharpener in the cockpit. An ashtray at the engineers seat -- lifted from an old Ford.
The huge job continues. And it has its perks. Like turning the two retirees working on it into kids again. They immediately pretended to take off when seated in the cockpit.
Working here brings back first flight memories for Tom Elliott.
"I was there," he said. "We were waiting and waiting and waiting, raining at the time. And I had my youngest son with me. saw it take off, you get emotional with it."
The world's first jumbo jet will never take to the skies again. But as it's restored, it still transports us all.
"It's coming back to life. just walking around the airplane, drive across on the freeway, you look at the plane and see that bright red and white again." Elliot said.
Dhein added: "That's the reward, seeing something finished, you accomplish something."
