The People Who Live Inside Airplanes
After losing her house to a fire, Jo Ann Ussery had a peculiar idea: to live in an airplane.
She bought an old Boeing 727 destined for the scrapyard, had it shipped to a plot of land she already owned, and spent six months renovating, doing most of the work herself. By the end, she had a fully functional home, with over 1,500 square feet of living space, three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and even a hot tub — where the cockpit used to be. All for less than $30,000, or about $60,000 in today’s money. Ussery — a beautician from Benoit, Mississippi — had no professional connection to aviation and was following the offbeat suggestion of her brother-in-law, an air traffic controller. She lived in the plane from 1995 to 1999, when it was irreparably damaged after falling off the truck that was moving to a different location nearby, where it would have been open for public display.
Although she wasn’t the first person to ever live in an airplane, her flawless execution of the project had an inspirational effect. In the late 1990s, Bruce Campbell, an electrical engineer with a private pilot license, was shocked by her story: “I was driving home and listening to [the radio,] and they had Jo Ann’s story, and it was amazing. I didn’t drive off the road because my focus turned entirely to it. And the next morning, I was placing phone calls,” he says. Campbell has now been living in his own plane — also a Boeing 727 — for over 20 years, in the woods of Hillsboro, Oregon: “I still stand on Jo Ann’s shoulder, and I’m grateful for the proof of concept.” He has no regrets: “I would never live in a conventional home. No chance. If Scotty beamed me to inner Mongolia, erased my fingerprints, and forced me to live in a conventional structure, I’d do what I have to do to survive — but otherwise, it’s a jetliner for me anytime.”
There are other notable examples of airplanes converted to homes. One of the earliest is a Boeing 307 Stratoliner once owned by billionaire and film director Howard Hughes, who spent a fortune remodeling the interior to turn it into a “Flying Penthouse.” After being damaged by a hurricane, it was turned into an extravagant motor yacht. It was eventually purchased in the 1980s by Florida resident Dave Drimmer, who extensively renovated it and renamed it “The Cosmic Muffin.” He lived in the plane-boat hybrid for 20 years before eventually donating it to the Florida Air Museum in 2018. American country singer and Nashville Hall of Fame’r Red Lane, who had a past as a plane mechanic, lived for decades in a converted DC-8 that he saved from the scrapyard in the late 1970s. Lane, who passed away in 2015, also had no regrets: “I have never, ever woke up in this place wishing I was somewhere else,” he revealed in a 2006 TV interview.
However, suppose you want to leave transitional housing behind and fully take to life inside a fuselage. In that case, you must be ready for challenges: “You’ve got to have a passion for wanting to do this because there’ll be so many problems that you’ll need to address that it can become overwhelming,” says Joe Axline, who lists sourcing the right airframe and finding a suitable location for it among the most significant hurdles.
That is perhaps why several of Bruce Campbell’s visitors expressed interest in adopting this lifestyle over the years. Still, none ever turned the dream into reality: “I think it’s pretty difficult for people: a few of my guests left convinced they wanted to do it, and I sent them articulated instructions to help them along step by step, but none have established momentum,” he says.
But don’t let that discourage you, Campbell adds: “My primary advice is to do it. Don’t let anybody shake your confidence. Work out all the logistics, and just do it.”