When flight instructor and former commercial airline pilot Jon Kotwicki happened upon a DC-6 air freighter for sale in 2022, he knew it was the perfect plane to transform into an overnight rental. However, once he made the purchase, “my first thought,” says Kotwicki, “was, ‘My God, what have I done?’”
Built in 1956, the 117-foot-wide, 108-foot-long cargo plane had spent its days carrying freight and fuel to remote villages in Alaska before retiring from flight. Now it sits on Kotwicki’s 115-acre property in Big Lake, Alaska, as a two-bedroom, one bath Airbnb unit. It’s also used by students at Kotwicki’s FLY8MA flight school, which he runs onsite.
Kotwicki says the decision to turn an airplane into accommodations came pretty out of the blue. “I didn’t start off with a ton of construction experience,” says Kotwicki, “so building a runway and cabins for students undergoing training was a steep learning curve for me. Still, the airplane was a totally different kind of ball game. Suddenly I’m working inside of a metal tube that’s round instead of square.”
Finding the right plane
It took six months of calling around until Kotwicki finally found a plane available for purchase: a piston-powered DC-6. This type of aircraft is known for its ruggedness and reliability—an ideal fit for Alaska’s extreme and unforgiving environment.
“There were other opportunities where someone would say, ‘You can have this plane for free—it crashed on a remote island in the Aleutians [an archipelago spread among the North Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea] 40 years ago and is completely corroded,’” he says. “But this is the first plane offered to us that made any sort of sense.”
So Kotwicki and his girlfriend, Stephanie Blanchard, made the five-hour drive north to its location in Fairbanks, then spent four days disassembling the aircraft and loading its parts onto trailers. For the dismantling process, he’d loaded his truck with a good socket set for tightening and untightening nuts and bolts; some DeWalt power tools; a generator and air compressor to power his equipment; and a plasma cutter, reciprocating saws, and grinders for slicing through material.
How to insulate a plane house
Once he got the deconstructed plane back to his Big Lake property, Kotwicki had the winter to test out different insulation methods, a crucial aspect in Alaska’s unforgiving environment. First, he spent an enormous number of hours watching YouTube videos pertaining to “Building Science,” the study of how buildings are designed and how their components interact with the environment. For example, how to best control mold, deal with indoor air quality, and handle moisture in -20 degrees Fahrenheit. These were some of his biggest hurdles.
From there, it was a lot of trial and error. Since fiberglass is fairly inexpensive compared with other materials, he tested this out first, but found that it didn’t seal up tight around the plane’s ribs, which give the wing its curved shape, and rivets, the pin-like fasteners that hold together its many metal parts. In turn, moisture would be able to pass through and condense on the aircraft’s aluminum, eventually creating what Kotwicki calls a corrosive and mold-conductive “rainforest or water” in its walls.
Ultimately, Kotwicki decided to use a combination of spray foam (which expands to fill cracks and cavities, preventing air leakage), Reflectix (a form of insulation that improves energy efficiency by reflecting radiant heat), and lots of plastic PVC trim to cover up the plane’s curved, aluminum ribs.
To manage any moisture in the air caused by showering, cooking, and breathing, Kotwicki installed a heat recovery ventilation (HRV) system. “It’s basically a really fancy bathroom exhaust fan system that pulls in fresh air from the back of the plane towards the cockpit and then takes any warm, moist air that’s in the aircraft and pushes it back towards the exhaust.”
Converting a freight carrier into a two bedroom apartment
With the help of 20 laborers, Kotwicki worked from approximately eight a.m. until midnight daily throughout an entire Alaskan summer to turn his DC-6 into lodging, trying to preserve much of the aircraft’s interior while transforming it into a place where people would want to stay. The six-guest home looks just like a plane from the outside, and sits on a 100-acre private lot with trails for scenic summer walks and cross-country skiing in winter. Guests enter via the structure’s cargo loading door. Its two bedrooms and bathroom are situated in the far back, with the cockpit in front and a kitchen, dining room, and living room in the middle. There’s even an al fresco dining patio on the wing.
Kotwicki kept the interior’s industrial look by using regular sheet metal on the walls. He also utilized shiplap, a type of wooden planking with overlapped edges that was originally used to create watertight joints on ships. “It works well in a curved space,” he says. For the floors—which are heated—Kotwicki went with Luxury Vinyl Planks (LVP), a durable and water-resistant flooring made to mimic the look of wood.
Original features include the front cockpit area, where both the captain and co-pilot chairs remain intact (along with many of its retro switches and original flight controls). The aircraft’s dome-shaped pressure bulkhead, which was once used to help maintain cabin pressure, serves as the headboard for its master bedroom’s king-size bed. There’s a washer and dryer onboard, and guests can even sip coffee and watch the morning sunrise right from the airplane’s fight deck.
The completed DC-6 aircraft apartment features heated floors, a king size bed, and an onboard washer and dryer. Video: The FLY8MA Team/ Jon Kotwicki
Open for lodging
Kotwicki opened his vintage airplane house to visitors in August 2022, and it was an instant hit. The accommodation is especially popular throughout summer, when couples and families come to experience what has been called the area’s “most unique lodging” and revel in the midnight sun.
“Kids just start sprinting up and down between the cockpit and the back, opening up doors and running back and forth,” says Kotwicki. “They’re excited to stay here and just go crazy. It’s pretty cool to watch.” Lodging starts at about $349 per night, not including taxes and fees.
More planes, more business
In the years since he first started transforming the DC-6, Kotwicki has become a certified aircraft mechanic and has acquired two more planes that he’s turned into lodging: a DC-9 from Fairbanks and a 727 that FedEx had donated to the local university. “They just weren’t sure what they were gonna do with the 727 in the long term,” says Kotwicki, “so I jokingly said I’d buy it.” In addition to the flight school and overnight stays, FLY8MA also offers scenic flight tours amid the region’s glacier-filled mountain surrounds.
Kotwicki says that building a house out of aluminum in Alaska—a place where the sun beats down from directly overhead 20 hours a day during summer and in winter, negative air temperatures, and endless darkness are par for the course—is the “worst idea that a person could possibly have.” But it hasn’t stopped him from acquiring more aircraft. “I still didn’t know what I was getting into when I brought back the next two,” he says.
Turning a plane into a motor home
But rather than building another stationary unit, he’s planning to turn a fourth plane (a C-119) into a motorhome to drive around the lower 48. “The idea is to get an old school bus or motor home and pull the body off of it,” he says. “Then to basically drop the airplane on top of the engine transmission chassis, and connect all the controls in the cockpit so I can drive it down the highway from there.”
It may be a lofty goal but, for Kotwicki, turning high-flying ideas into reality has become second nature.
In The Workshop, Popular Science highlights the ingenious, delightful, and often surprising projects people build in their spare time. If you or someone you know is working on a hobbyist project that fits the bill, we’d love to hear about it—fill out this form to tell us more.
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