Retired 'Queen of the Skies' finds new life as classroom in LA

For two decades, the Boeing 747-400 known as HL7489 was a workhorse of the Pacific, a double-decker behemoth that ferried passengers across oceans and helped cement Korea’s place in the global aviation hierarchy. On Tuesday, after a storied career of more than 86,000 flight hours, the "Queen of the Skies" made its debut in a new, more stationary role: as the centerpiece of a major educational initiative at the California Science Center. The unveiling of the Korean Air Aviation Gallery marks a significant cultural gift to Los Angeles, a city that Cho Won-tae, chairman of Hanjin Group, described as a "second home" for the airline. In a ceremony attended by local officials and museum leadership, the airline formally presented the massive aircraft, stripped and reimagined as an interactive laboratory for flight. The gallery, housed within the museum’s forthcoming Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center, is designed to demystify the complex physics of aviation for a new generation. Rather than viewing the aircraft from behind a velvet rope, visitors will be invited to step inside the fuselage

Original source: Korea Times