Yours for just $299,000: Lady Penelope, the first 747 to fly the Virgin Atlantic livery

Seller admits: without engines the painting on the tail maybe the plane's best feature

Lady Penelope waiting for love in the desert (Airways News)

She stands forlorn in an airplane boneyard in the Arizona desert, but Lady Penelope, until recently part of Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Atlantic fleet, is putting on her lipstick one last time in hopes that someone might give her a new lease on life. Or at least a nicer place to die.

The plane, the first 747-400 series jumbo jet to enter service with the London-based carrier back in 1994, flew her last revenue-earning flight in September last year from John F. Kennedy Airport in New York to Heathrow, a victim not just of her advancing years but also of the broader movement in the industry to switch to more fuel-efficient twin-engined aircraft.

Her final flights, without passengers, took her to Gatwick, then Las Vegas and from there to the Goodyear airfield near Phoenix, where she joined other excess or decommissioned commercial aircraft.

Now she is on offer on the eBay online auction site for a price that may not quite do justice to her glamourous past, her Upper Class top deck a virtual private club in the sky with bar and massage service for those Virgin customers who could afford it. The opening bid on the site on Thursday remained at a mere $299,000. That comes beneath the note: “Item condition: Used.”

Indeed she is. And there are number of small-print details potential buyers - the page was clocking about 2,000 viewers per hour - might want to consider before indulging themselves by buying their own Boeing 747, once venerated as the Queen of the Skies.

The price, for example, does not include delivery. Which leads you to the other small problem: the engines, all the key avionics as well as the auxiliary power unit, APU, have been removed.

Lady Penelope, in other words, is not take-off ready and may have to be dragged from her the apron at Goodyear by other means. And possibly in several pieces.

“We have all of the capabilities to disassemble and transport the plane in sections. It is also possible to section out the plane out if you only require the fuselage, cockpit or the wings,” the seller, identified as Concord Aerospace, says in its pitch on eBay while insisting she remains a special lady, retired only “after an illustrious career in the skies for the past 25 years as a part of the Virgin Atlantic fleet.” (Not quite 25 years, but let’s not quibble.)

Her name is still there in whimsical font on the nose beneath the cockpit, while the words Virgin Atlantic have been smudged from her tail, a necessary wound in airplane deconsecrations, while the rest of the distinctive livery remains.

“Lady Penelope, as with all Virgin Atlantic plane liveries, has a unique feature that is the large illustration of their iconic "Flying Lady" on both sides of the tail section,” the pitch on the eBay page goes on. “This is a 50' by 30' large scale painting on the fuselage that could be cut out and can become one of the most unique aviation memorabilia in any collection.”

Put that way, $299,000 might seem rather a lot for a painting on metal.