A flight simulator. A coffee bar. A lounge.
“The sky’s the limit,” Ismael Lara said about what he might do with the inoperable 1966 Boeing 727 he purchased at auction from the city of El Paso in January.
The El Paso educator and entrepreneur, along with his brother, John Lara, paid $10,132 – including taxes and other fees – for the three-engine gutted airliner that has sat idle at El Paso International Airport for about 20 years.
“When you see this – it’s so hard to see it – but, I see it completely differently,” the 40-year-old Ismael Lara said during a recent walkthrough of the plane with El Paso Matters. “I see it with beautiful floors, refinished everything. But of course you want to keep some of the things that give it character and history.”
The airplane was owned by the U.S. Marshals Service as part of its Justice Prisoner and Alien Transportation System. It was later owned by David Paul Tokoph, a pilot with a storybook life who ran the Blue Falcon Corp. charter flight company. Tokoph died in an airplane crash near Las Cruces in 2015 in another aircraft he was piloting.
Some time after Tokoph’s death, the charter plane company stopped making payments required to keep the airplane on the grounds of the El Paso International Airport. The city began legal proceedings to take ownership of the plane as abandoned property in 2021.
READ MORE: Sold! Boeing 727 long abandoned at El Paso airport sells for $10K at auction
It was listed in a government surplus website in January, where Lara came across it just a few days before the auction closed.
So, was it an impulse buy?
“No, I thought it out. But it was a bit of a fast decision,” he said. “We found out only three days before, so we had to do all our homework quickly.”
Climbing aboard the aircraft through the set of stairs that open from a hatch at its underbelly, Lara talked about all the ideas he has for it – and all the ideas people have offered him, including on social media.
“I have a ton of ideas, but at the end of the day it’s going to come down to how much is it going to cost?” he said.
The brothers own some property near Red Sands in far East El Paso County, which is where they’d like to set up the plane. But getting it there won’t be an easy – or cheap – task.
Getting the airliner out of the airport property could cost up to $250,000, Lara said. The brothers will likely have to disassemble the plane’s wings and cut its body in half to transport it – a task complicated by ongoing road work along Montana Avenue that would otherwise give haulers an almost straight shot to their property.
For now, Lara said he’s focused on the possibilities, wanting to incorporate learning into whatever he makes of the Boeing 727. He wants to tap local artists to add color and vibrancy to its rusting white exterior.
He walked through the body of the plane stripped of all its seats, rows of wires exposed and some yellow oxygen masks still folded nicely in their compartments. The doors to the lavatory and the curtain to the galley are loose, but Lara said he believes both areas are conversation starters. He doesn’t know yet whether they’ll stay or go.
Entering the cockpit, he talked excitedly about how children can learn about the plane’s mechanics hands-on – what role its wings, flaps and spoilers play in making the 80,000-pound hunk of metal fly.
The control wheels and throttle levers are in place, though pieces are missing from all the other gadgets around them. He opened the overwing emergency exit door to stand on the wing, thinking visitors might enjoy doing the same.
“That’s where my head is, what I keep coming back to,” he said, adding that it would be a way to give back to the community.
Though Lara has ventures in online surplus sales, construction equipment and marketing, he holds a master’s degree in bilingual education from the University of Texas at El Paso and primarily works as an educational consultant.
His brother, John Lara, 38, an assistant principal at the Alicia Chacon International School, founded STEAMspirations, which provides educational kits, online workshops, and institutional consultations. He also holds a master’s in education from UTEP and is pursuing his doctorate at Grand Canyon University.
Ismael Lara noted that he and his brother at one time dropped out of high school but later continued their education. Along the way, their entrepreneurial spirit set in, buying from local surplus sales to sell items on Ebay – printers, computers, furniture and even portable classrooms.
“I try to find a new life for everything,” he said. “This is definitely the biggest thing we’ve ever bought.”
Is selling it – as-is to another buyer or in parts for scrap – an option?
“We’re not at that point,” he said. “But that might depend on what we can get for it.”
The post Who paid $10K for Boeing 727 abandoned at El Paso airport? appeared first on El Paso Matters.
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