A new hostel in a converted jumbo jet means you can enjoy all the fun of flying without leaving the ground.
Welcome to one of the world’s coolest hostels! Here you can spend the night onboard a real jumbo jet – in the ground! Choose between sparkling three-bed rooms with shared shower and toilet in the corridor or the luxury suite in the converted cockpit with its panoramic view of the airport. At Jumbo Hostel you´re guaranteed a unique and outstanding experience at a good price.
Oscar Diös previously owns and operates the hostel Uppsala Vandrarhem och Hotell. „I was getting ready to expand my hostel business in 2006 when I heard about an old wreck of an aircraft for sale at Arlanda. Since I had for a long time wanted to establish my business at Arlanda I didn’t hesitate for a second when this opportunity struck”, Oscar Diös explains.
The airplane, a worn out jumbo jet of the model 747-200 built in 1976, had Transjet as its last owner, an air operator that was bankrupt in 2002.
Next summer the plane will be towed to its final destination at the entrance to Arlanda where it will be placed on a concrete foundation with the landing gear secured in two steel cradles. Here, Jumbo Hostel will be a spectacular landmark as a portal to Arlanda offering a view of the landing strip. No visitor to Arlanda will miss the new hostel!
Brief facts about Jumbo Hostel
Airplane type: Boeing 747-200
Year of manufacture: 1976
Name: Liv (after owner’s daughter)
Number of rooms: 25
Number of beds in total: 85
Number of beds per room: Three bunk beds
Room size: Circa 6 square meters, 3 meters to ceiling
When a jumbo jet dies (and plenty of them do these days), it’s usually sold for scrap or sent to bake in the desert until the end of time. But Swedish entrepreneur Oscar Dios has a better idea for the 30-year-old junker he bought – turn it into a hostel.
Dios is stuffing 85 beds into a gutted Boeing 747 he’s dubbed Jumbo Hostel and parked right outside Stockholm’s Arlanda Airport. It’s got 25 rooms, with some of the nicest on the plane’s upper floor. But if you’re looking for a romantic evening with someone special (or someone you picked up a few hours ago), you’ll want the deluxe cockpit suite. It’s bigger, it’s got its own bathroom and it offers a stunning view of the runway.
25 rooms
Jumbo Hostel offers 25 rooms with most three beds in each. All together, the hostel offers 72 beds; one more luxurious are to be found at the uper deck. The rooms are circa six square meters wide and measure three meters from floor to ceiling. All rooms have a flat screen TV where you can, among other things, watch the times of departure for all flights. Everywhere in the jumbo jet you have access to wireless broadband. All rooms offer a shower and toilet in the corridor, except for cockpit suite upstairs which boast their own shower and WC.
While most of the rooms have shared bathrooms and showers, they’ve all got heat and air conditioning, WiFi and – in a nod to the airplane geeks surely making reservations – flatscreen televisions that double as departure/arrival monitors.
On the downside, the rooms at the Jumbo Hostel are anything but – most are 20 feet square feet with nine-foot ceilings. Considering there are three beds to a room, that’s quite a squeeze, particularly if you’re bunking with strangers. But really, if you’re looking for a place where you can stretch out and kick back, an airplane shouldn’t be your first choice.
Turning an old plane into a place to spend the night is cool. But turning it into a place where we can afford to spend the night is even cooler. It would have been easy for Dios to trick out his plane with ten luxury suites, tow it into downtown Stockholm and sell it as an overpriced boutique hotel for the beautiful people. But instead, he chose to leave it at the airport, and keep it accessible to the masses.
In our café you can buy breakfast, coffee and cookies and basic meals. You will be able to heat up food you brought along. Everybody is welcome to come and enjoy the view and have a cup of coffee.
Jumbo Hostel is not just a hostel. It’s also a fun place to go on an excursion for the family, for everyone interested in airplanes. Of course, also those people not staying at the hostel are welcome to visit for a coffee or a snack in our café, to check out the plane and, not least, enjoy the view from the left wing of the plane. There is a walkway where you can go out to explore the vertiginous feeling of standing on top of a jumbo jet’s wing.