Hangar 915 is completing the professional path toward public opening. Follow the transformation.
Two El Paso Educators. One Forgotten Boeing 727. A Dream That Seemed Impossible.
We’re not developers. We’re not wealthy investors. We’re two brothers and educators from El Paso who took a chance on something almost everyone else had given up on.
A nearly 60 year old Boeing 727.
Inoperable. Gutted. Weathered by time. Abandoned at the El Paso airport for nearly two decades.
To many people, it was an enormous problem waiting to be hauled away. A massive piece of aviation history whose best days seemed to be long behind it.
We saw something different.
We saw possibility. So when the opportunity came, we did something a little crazy.
We bought a Boeing 727 for just over $10,000.
Buying a Boeing 727 for just over $10,000 sounds like the deal of a lifetime. Saving one is an entirely different story.
When we started, we did not have a massive budget, a team of aviation experts, or a perfectly calculated plan showing us exactly how everything would work.
We had a dream. And sometimes, if we are being completely honest, a dream was about all we had. People laughed. People questioned whether two educators had the money to pull something like this off.
Some wondered whether we understood what we had gotten ourselves into. And at times, we wondered the same thing.
But as educators, there was something strangely familiar about looking at this airplane. A good educator does not look at a student during one difficult moment and decide that moment defines who that child will become.
You look beyond where they are. You see where they could go. That is how we looked at this plane. Not for what it was. For what it could become.
TIMELINE - DECEMBER 2024
The Dream Begins
It started with a GovDeals auction listing. A nearly 60 year old Boeing 727 had been sitting at El Paso International Airport for almost two decades. The opening bid was only $1,000. To most people, it was an enormous old aircraft that no longer flew and needed to go. To us, it looked like possibility. We did not know what it would ultimately cost. We did not know how many problems were hiding inside it. We did not know exactly how we were going to move it.
We simply knew we did not want to watch the opportunity disappear without trying.
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TIMELINE - JANUARY 2025
56 Bids Later
After roughly three weeks and 56 bids, we won the Boeing 727 for $9,360, before taxes and fees. For a brief moment, it felt like we had accomplished the impossible. Then reality showed up.
Buying the airplane was the easy part.
The aircraft had to be completely removed from its airport hangar within the required timeframe. Suddenly, two educators from El Paso had to answer a question we had never imagined asking ourselves:
How exactly do you move a Boeing 727?
And that was only the beginning.
TIMELINE - FEBRUARY THROUGH JUNE 2025
The Plane Did Not Want to Come Apart
Taking Apart a Boeing 727
There is no simple way to dismantle a commercial jet and move it across town.
The aircraft had to come apart into enormous sections that could be transported while preserving what we hoped to put back together.
It required two cranes, multiple large trucks, specialized equipment, and many helping hands to move the aircraft and its major sections to our property.
For Ismael, much of this chapter became very literal sweat equity. He spent countless hours physically working on the aircraft, taking things apart, solving one problem after another, and pushing through the West Texas heat as the project stretched far beyond anything we had anticipated. Then there was the rust.
After sitting for nearly twenty years, almost nothing wanted to move.
Screws would not turn. Bolts would not release.
Pieces that looked like they should take minutes to remove could consume hours. Nearly every part of the airplane seemed determined to fight us.
What we thought might move quickly stretched into months. The timeline changed. Costs grew. Frustration grew.
And every solved problem seemed to reveal another one behind it. Then we opened the cargo bay.
The $25,000 Surprise
The cargo doors would not budge. When they were finally pried open, we discovered something we had absolutely not planned for.
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The unexpected bill was approximately $25,000.
More than twice what we had paid for the airplane itself. When Ismael saw what had been hiding inside the aircraft, he sent photographs to the airport and said:
“You guys had a bomb here.”
It was one of those moments when the people who had laughed at the idea suddenly seemed a little more reasonable.
Maybe this really was crazy. Maybe we did not have enough money. Maybe we had taken on something far bigger than ourselves. And maybe walking away would have been easier. But we kept going.
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Educators Learn Not to Give Up Too Quickly
Throughout our careers, we have worked with children who needed someone to see beyond the moment they were in.
A student can struggle. A student can fall behind. A student can have circumstances working against them.
But you do not look at that child and say: “This is all you will ever be.” You keep teaching. You adjust. You solve the next problem. You celebrate progress.
And most importantly, you keep believing in what that student can become, even when they may not see it yet themselves. In a strange way, that became our approach to this airplane.
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Not because an airplane and a child are the same. But because education had already taught us something important:
Never define something only by its hardest chapter.
So instead of trying to solve the entire Boeing 727 at once, we concentrated on the next problem.
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One rusted bolt.
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One aircraft section.
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One crane.
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One truck.
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One unexpected expense.
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One setback at a time.
And eventually, the impossible started looking different.
The Plane Made It Home
There was a time when people questioned whether we could even get the Boeing 727 out of the airport.
We did.
Then came another question. Could we ever put it back together?
We did that too.
Today, the Boeing 727 is on our property and has been pieced back together.
A concrete slab foundation has been constructed beneath it. Major restoration work has been completed.
And the interior has been renovated, transforming what was once a gutted aircraft into a space where you can finally begin to see Hangar 915 taking shape.
There was a time when this project existed mostly in our imagination.
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Today:
You can stand inside the dream.
But the Story Is Not Finished
We want to be completely honest about where we are today. Putting the airplane back together does not mean we are ready to open the doors. Our next challenge is making sure everything is properly engineered, documented, safe, and ready for approval.
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We are currently working with a Professional Engineer who believed enough in our crazy project to take it seriously and help us move toward the next stage. That means engineering evaluations. Plans. Certification. Any improvements that may still be required.
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And ultimately, Hangar 915 must still meet the necessary requirements and pass inspection with the Fire Marshal before we can fully open to the public. There is still work ahead. There will be more expenses. There will probably be more surprises
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But this time, when another challenge appears, we can look out at a Boeing 727 sitting on its foundation and remember everything that has already happened. The airplane people doubted we could move… was moved. The airplane that arrived in pieces… was put back together.
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The gutted interior… was renovated. The dream people laughed at… is now sitting on our property. Maybe that is the lesson this airplane keeps teaching us. As educators, we have always believed that where a student begins does not determine where that student can finish.
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Maybe dreams deserve that same patience. Maybe people do too. And maybe sometimes the difference between something being called impossible and something being called extraordinary is simply that somebody refused to give up on it long enough to see what it could become.