In April 1975, Elvis Presley bought a Convair 880 jet airliner from Delta Air Lines. It was seventeen years old and had spent fifteen of them hauling ordinary passengers around America. He paid roughly $250,000 for it. Then he spent more than $800,000 — over three times the purchase price — turning it into something no rock star had ever owned. He named it Lisa Marie, after his eight-year-old daughter. He called it his Flying Graceland.
The transformation took six months. The plane had been built to carry 96 passengers. When Elvis was finished with it, it carried 28—because the rest of the space had been given over to living. What went in reads like a fantasy: a living room, a conference room finished in teak with a large oval glass table and leather armchairs, a sitting room that converted into a guest bedroom, a bar, a professional hair and makeup station, and two bathrooms, the larger one fitted with a shower.
At the back was his own private bedroom, with a custom-built queen-sized bed, a lounge chair, a television and its own en-suite. Then came the details people struggle to believe. The seat belts were gold-plated. The sinks were flecked with 24-karat gold. There were suede chairs, leather-topped tables, and a stereo system reported to run to fifty-two speakers, plus a video system wired to four TVs and a sky-to-ground telephone.
Inside the Lisa Marie Jet — Elvis’s Flying Palace
The outside got the same treatment. The jet was painted red, white and blue, and on the tail went the TCB lightning bolt — Elvis’s personal motto, Taking Care of Business in a flash. It could fly around 3,000 miles, which suited a man who preferred to travel at night, and it usually carried only eight or ten people in a cabin built for far more.
While he was waiting for the refit, he got impatient and bought a second plane — a Lockheed JetStar he named Hound Dog II. And that same July, mid-tour, he decided Colonel Tom Parker should have one too, so he bought his manager an aircraft sight unseen.
Here’s the sad arithmetic, though. Elvis took delivery of the Lisa Marie in late 1975 and died in August 1977. He had his dream plane for under two years.
His father Vernon sold it in 1978. It passed through a couple of owners, and when Graceland opened to the public in 1982, Elvis Presley Enterprises set about tracking it down and bringing it home. In 1984, the Lisa Marie flew back to Memphis, and it has sat there ever since as one of the most popular attractions on the estate — you can walk through the bedroom and see the gold sinks yourself.
Only 65 Convair 880s were ever built. Elvis’s is the only one that has been properly preserved. The rock star private jet, as an idea, essentially starts with this airplane — and it began life as a second-hand airliner nobody wanted.