For decades, one phrase instantly told people they were in Lower Bucks County:
“Make a left at the airplane.”
Long before GPS, nearly everybody knew exactly what that meant.
The Airplane Family Restaurant and Diner in Penndel was one of Bucks County’s most unforgettable landmarks.
Sitting at the corner of Route 1 and Durham Road, a massive Lockheed Super G Constellation airplane served as part restaurant, part cocktail lounge, and part childhood memory for generations of local families.
The idea came to Jim Flannery in 1967, while flipping through a trade journal. Novelty restaurants built inside old train cars and ferry boats were drawing crowds across the country.
Flannery, a pilot, put down the magazine and asked himself a question nobody in Bucks County had thought to ask: What about an airplane?
He tracked down a 1954 Lockheed Super G Constellation from Capitol Airways, had it transported to Penndel, and mounted it on supports at the corner of Route 1 and Durham Road.
When Flannery’s Constellation Lounge opened in 1968, there was nothing else like it for miles.
Guests climbed a spiral staircase to reach the plane, stepping into a lounge and dining area that still had the original cockpit intact.
Birthdays, wedding receptions, banquets, and countless family dinners played out inside the fuselage of a retired commercial aircraft.
For kids growing up in Lower Bucks County, it was the most exotic place imaginable.
Flannery went bankrupt in 1982, but the restaurant kept flying.
Two subsequent owners carried it forward, first as Amelia’s and then as the Airplane Family Restaurant and Diner, before the doors finally closed in 1995.
The memories, though, never faded. “This place was a blast as a kid,” one former customer recently wrote on Reddit.
Another captured what the landmark meant to an entire generation: “We knew we were practically there when we saw the plane.”
Even the critics were fond ones. “The food was terrible, the seating was uncomfortable and cramped and as a kid I loved every second of it,” another commenter wrote.
In 1997, the plane was removed when the property was redeveloped into a gas station. A small airplane mounted on the station sign today is the only hint of what once stood there.
The Constellation itself fared better.
Fully restored, it found a permanent home at the Air Mobility Command Museum at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.
If you want to see the Connie one more time, she is still out there. Just not in Penndel anymore.
Head over to Reddit and see how many Lower Bucks County readers still have a story to share about The Airplane Family Restaurant and its plane.
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