AllStar Airlines Boeing 747-100

If you visited any Air Force base in the continental United States in the 80s, there’s a good chance you would have seen an AllStar 747 parked at the ramp. In a period of cooldown from the Cold War there were widespread military base decommissionings across the nation. With this, AllStar (alongside many other airlines) picked up contracts to relocate equipment, personnel, and sometimes weapons to other bases. The AllStar 747s also frequently made trips to the Middle East with the buildup to Desert Storm.

The shining star of AllStar was adorned on all 12 of their Boeing 747s. These ranged from the old -100s (of which there were 7) and newer -200s (which composed the rest of the fleet). Almost all of these jets came secondhand and underwent freighter conversion. By the time the airline ceased operations in 2006, only three 747-100s composed the entire fleet. These would all be shipped off to Mojave for scrapping.

This jet, N121AL, first joined the fleet in 1978 after undergoing a short freighter conversion which was overseen by Boeing. It served a common route between Travis Air Force Base and Elmendorf Air Force Base and occasionally flew to Saudi Arabia during the days of Desert Storm. It would eventually be retired in 2001 and stored indefinitely at Mojave Air and Space Port. The jet was named “Lubbock Lights” in relation to it’s Texan heritage and the UFO incident over the city of Lubbock, with the stars on the jet representing the “lights.”