Joe Axline was just 11 years old when he decided he would live in an airplane one day.
The year was 1973. Axline, the son of an airplane mechanic and pilot, loved to watch “The Magician.” The show was about a master stage illusionist named Tony Blake, who actor Bill Bixby played. Tony used magic to solve crimes. Flying around in his Boeing 720, which served as his mobile lab and his home, he would swoop in and save the day. At the end of each episode, Tony got into his Corvette, drove it into the back of the Boeing 720, and took off. The license plate of the car – and the name of the jet – was “Spirit.”
The short-lived NBC series made quite an impression on Axline.
After getting his pilot’s license at 18, Axline responsibly put aside the dream of living in an airplane to focus on his career, marriage, and kids.
A Dream Becomes Reality
After his marriage came to an end in 2011, Axline’s dream took flight once again. On the day he got divorced, he began to look for a property on which a plane could become his home.
He decided to call the endeavor “Project Freedom.” Axline chose the name after a friend suggested that his divorce finally gave him the freedom to fulfill his lifelong dream of moving into an airplane.
Axline, who had lived with his family in Katy, Texas, a Houston suburb, found a piece of land at the Sport Flyers Airport in nearby Brookshire.
Originally, Axline’s dream was to live in the fuselage of a Boeing 747. However, he quickly discovered that acquiring and transporting a 747 on major highways would be an astronomically expensive logistical nightmare.
Axline heard about a McDonnell Douglas DC-9-41 that was up for auction in Florida. The wingless 50-foot section of the fuselage of the DC-9, an ex-Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) bird, had spent several years as an attraction inside a mall. After agreeing on a price, he acquired the aircraft and began arranging its transport to Texas.
Shortly after that, Axline purchased a second plane — a McDonnell Douglas MD-81 (also wingless) from a storage facility at Arkansas International Airport (BYH) in Blytheville, Ark. The MD-81 would go on to serve as the primary living space for Axline’s new home.
Making a Plane Into a Home
The ex-Midwest MD-81 would be the first to arrive in Brookshire. Axline got to work by placing the 60-foot section of fuselage on support columns and gutting the interior. The plane, which Axline named “Freedom,” was completely renovated. He installed a water and sewer system, waterproof electrical wiring, hardwood floors, LED lighting, and insulation foam to protect from the harsh heat and occasional winter cold of south Texas.
Freedom’s floorplan consists of a master bedroom, sleeping areas for Axline’s two children, a bathroom, a living room, a small office, a kitchen, and an outdoor deck for entertaining. The deck floor, which contains a giant life-sized chessboard, also serves as a covered carport. Below the cockpit, Axline built a wine room and a library. The cargo hold is a game room. Kitchen countertops feature repurposed sections of the cabin ceiling.
Besides keeping the original cockpit in place, Axline kept overhead bins, windows and shades, an original bathroom sink, lights, air vents, oxygen masks, cabinets, and even an old Jeppesen manual.
Project Freedom is a Work in Progress
A month after the MD-81 arrived, the DC-9 fuselage showed up. Plans call for turning that aircraft, which Axline has dubbed “Spirit,” into a movie theater and craft room.
Axline future plans include connecting Freedom and Spirit with a bridge and building a hangar over his home to give the impression that the planes are at an airport. He says he would also like to add wings to both Freedom and Spirit.
Additionally, he wants to add a mini control tower, model trains, and cars to his landscaping. That way, when people look out of the windows of his home, it gives the illusion of being in the air.
And for those curious about what sleeping in an airplane home is like, the property available to rent on Airbnb.
The Backstory of the Project Freedom Planes
The DC-9 used for Project Freedom is an ex-Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) bird (reg: SE-DDT/MSN 47779). Delivered to SAS in 1979, she would spend her entire life there as the “Amund Viking” before being stored in the New Mexico desert in 2002.
In 2004, a Florida-based company called Wannado Entertainment purchased the aircraft for use at an attraction planned for the Sawgrass Mills Mall in Sunrise, Fla., just outside Fort Lauderdale. The aircraft would become part of “Wannado City,” an indoor role-playing amusement center for kids. Sponsored by Miramar, Fla.-based Spirit Airlines, the DC-9 fuselage was painted in the carrier’s early-2000s livery and used as the “Spirit Airlines Flight Academy” attraction in Wannado City.
After years of declining visitor numbers, Wannado City closed in January 2011. Its contents, including the DC-9, were auctioned off.
Project Freedom’s MD-81 was delivered to Swissair in May 1981 (reg: HB-INH). In 1995, she became a SAS bird (reg: OY-KIH), where she would stay for six years. In March 2001, she went to Midwest Express Airlines (which became Midwest Airlines in 2002) as N813ME. Ahead of Midwest’s merger with Frontier Airlines in 2010, N813ME went to storage in Blytheville, Ark.
The Dream is Worth It
Axline has worked countless hours to make his dream of “living in an airplane” a reality. Since the project began, Axline estimates he has spent close to a quarter million dollars on Project Freedom.
But the dream is worth it, he says.
“Dream big and do something every day towards your dream,” he said in a Facebook post recently. “It may take 50 years to get there, but it’s worth it.”
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