There are expensive ways to build a mansion in Malibu, and then there is Francie Rehwald’s way. The retired Mercedes-Benz dealer bought an entire Boeing 747 for approximately $30,000, had its enormous airframe cut apart in the California desert, trucked more than 100 miles under police escort, and then airlifted sections of its wings into the Santa Monica Mountains using a heavy-lift Chinook helicopter.
The result is the 747 Wing House, an extraordinary residence overlooking the Pacific Ocean where the wings of one of the earliest jumbo jets ever built now serve as sweeping roofs. Designed by architect David Hertz, the house sits on a 55-acre property that was once part of the flamboyant Malibu estate of legendary Hollywood designer Tony Duquette, as reported by LA Times.
What began as Rehwald’s request for an environmentally conscious home with feminine curves and a floating roof ultimately became one of the most ambitious examples of aviation recycling ever attempted.
The 28th Boeing 747 ever built was cut apart in the desert
The aircraft was no anonymous piece of scrap. Registered N93106, it was a Boeing 747-131 delivered to Trans World Airlines in 1970 and was only the 28th Jumbo ever to roll out of Boeing’s factory. It flew for TWA until 1992 and later wore the blue-and-white colors of Tower Air, paint that was sandblasted away before its wings began their unlikely transformation into architecture.
Hertz was inspired by the immense structural efficiency of aircraft wings, which combine exceptional strength, lightness, and enormous spans. A single 747 wing could cover around 232 square meters, making it an almost ready-made answer to Rehwald’s desire for a dramatically cantilevered roof. Rather than construct something that merely resembled a wing, Hertz decided to use the real thing.
Four men dismantled the 230-foot aircraft at Victorville, filleting off the upper half of the fuselage and bisecting its 125-foot wings. The gigantic pieces were then trucked more than 100 miles to Camarillo, a journey that required police escorts and overnight freeway closures. But trucks could only go so far. The steep, twisting canyon roads leading to the remote Malibu property were impossible for such enormous loads to navigate.
The wings had to fly one last time beneath a Chinook
For the final leg of their journey, the wing sections returned to the sky. A Columbia Helicopters heavy-lift Chinook carried them into the hills, with individual loads weighing around 10,000 pounds, before carefully lowering them onto the ridge. In effect, each wing had to make one final flight before becoming part of the house.
The operation was not without danger. Hertz recalled that if one of the enormous wing sections began turning or caught the wind, the helicopter crew would simply have to drop it. As the first wing appeared over the Malibu hillside, Rehwald reportedly jumped up and down, shouting with excitement.
According to ABC7, Rehwald paid around $30,000 for the 747 and charged the purchase to her credit card to collect airline miles. Moving and transforming it, however, was a vastly more complicated affair.
The project required a two-year approval process involving 17 government agencies, including scrutiny from Homeland Security, while published estimates put the heavy-lift helicopter’s cost alone at between $8,000 and $18,000 per hour.
A Malibu mansion that still looks unmistakably like an airplane
The finished house does not attempt to disguise where its most spectacular components came from. The two wings cascade down the ridgeline, one appearing to float above the other, their reflective aluminum surfaces following the horizontality of the mountains rather than competing with the surrounding sea, sky, and landscape. Wing tips cantilever as far as 45 feet, hovering above floor-to-ceiling low-emissivity glass walls and creating expansive, unobstructed views across the valley and toward the Pacific.
Concrete walls were cut into the hillside to support the wings, while steel brace frames were connected to strategic structural points where the 747’s engines had once been mounted. Frameless structural glass rises from the concrete slab to the aircraft-wing roofs, giving the residence a transparent, lightweight character despite the colossal scale of the salvaged components.
Hertz deliberately preserved the evidence of the jet’s previous life. Riveted aluminum skin, seams, and industrial finishes remain visible, while the cut ends reveal the teardrop-shaped profiles and intricate attachment structures normally hidden inside an aircraft. A section of fuselage with its original passenger windows became an interior architectural feature, and an engine cowling was transformed into a sculptural fountain and fire pit.
Perhaps the most extraordinary experience belongs to Rehwald herself. One of the wings connects directly to her bedroom, allowing her to step outside and effectively go wing-walking above the Malibu hills.
The original master plan was even more ambitious, envisioning the 747’s nose as a 45-foot-tall meditation pavilion, part of the upper fuselage as an art studio roof, the cargo hold covering a barn, and the first-class lounge becoming a guest house.
Those additional structures were never built, but the completed Wing House hardly feels incomplete. It remains a place where a historic jumbo jet, once capable of carrying hundreds of passengers across continents, found an improbable final destination as the roof of a Malibu mansion.
