Travellers' ChecksIconic 1960s terminal building at New York’s JFK Airport to open as stylish TWA Hotel

The long-awaited TWA Hotel, at New York’s JFK Airport, has just started accepting reservations for its opening date, May 15. Occupying the former TWA Flight Center, which opened in 1962, the new 512-room hotel features classic TWA (aka Trans World Airlines) branding inside and out. Nowhere is this more prominent than on a restored Constellation that has been converted into a stylish cocktail lounge.

TWA was the launch customer of the Constellation in 1945, and the airline’s owner, Howard Hughes, is said to have had a hand in the aircraft’s design. In 1946, TWA started the first scheduled round-the-world service, and soon the “Connie” became a familiar sight at airports everywhere.

Operating airlines included BOAC, Air France, Qantas, South African Airways and Brazil’s Varig. Air India used a Constellation named the Malabar Princess for its first international flight (Mumbai to London, in 1948) and featured images of the aircraft in various ways on the cover of its timetables for several years.

A chartered Air India Constellation flying from Hong Kong to Jakarta put the then colony squarely on the international media stage in April 1955, when it was brought down over the South China Sea by a bomb that had been planted on it at Kai Tak airport.

With eight crew members and 11 passengers aboard, on their way from Beijing to the Bandung Conference, in Indonesia, the Kashmir Princess was supposed to have been carrying China’s premier, Zhou Enlai. The bombing was apparently a failed assassination attempt carried out by a Kuomintang operative. The alleged bomb planter worked as a cleaner for the Hong Kong Aircraft Engineering Company (Haeco) at the time. He escaped to Taiwan soon after, and Taipei refused his requested extradition.