Flying to Sweden – Stay at a hotel made out of an airplane

by wrasmus | Jan 21, 2020 | Uncategorized | 16 comments

The time has come to head back to Sweden again for a visit. Sweden is my home country and I was there for a couple of weeks, a few mounts back. I spend most of my time outside of Sweden now a days but I still come back from time to time. Mostly for short visits. Now I have been in Abu Dhabi for about three months and I will definitely head back there soon again. Until then I guess the travels will continue. Part by part.

It was a long day of flying and you know how they always makes us tired. Sometimes it is nice to have a room to sleep in as soon as you touch land at the airport. I have never really been much for the flying part of the traveling. I think it is mostly the airports which I don’t like that much. But sometimes you feel like you just want to check in to a hotel after flying. We all get tired from all the waiting in lines to drop off the luggage, to pass through the security with lots of people etc. When you’re in the air it is ok. You watch movies, listen to podcasts/music and read a book. But I never manage to sleep that well, mostly because of the small seats and the movements of the plane. I sleep better on boats that are rolling over the waves then on shaking planes. The bigger planes for the longer flights are better than the little ones in Europe. Of course most airports have ordinary nice hotels available to check in to when you arrive. But how about a more alternative airport-hotel experience? How about sleeping on an airplane that stands still on the ground. But in a nice bed in a hotel room.

I first flew from Abu Dhabi, UAE to Heathrow, London. Which took a little over 8 hours. Then I waited there on the airport for about three hours. Changing terminal, then it was another little flight from London to Stockholm Arlanda which took 2 hours 30 minutes. There wasn’t much people on the plane so I had three seats for myself to lay down and sleep on, which was great to be on an economy flight in Europe. By the time the plane landed in Stockholm it was about 1:30 at night and I was about to continue my sleep in a bed on a hotel made out of an old airplane.

I had booked a room at a hotel/hostel called Jumbo Stay, which is made out of an old jumbo jet air plane which stays on a field by the Arlanda airport in Stockholm. There is a walking lane which takes you there from terminal 5 in about 25 minutes. A walk which was a little bit more boring than I was hoping. It was dark and windy and I was not used to the cold. But I was lucky it wasn’t as cold as it usually is in February. It was about plus 8 degrees Celsius but a little windy and I was tired. Normally it would be minus degrees, snow and ice everywhere this time of the year. I didn’t want to take a taxi for this short distance, because they all have a fixed price of about 60 euro which just as well can take you all the way in to central Stockholm (That is about 1h, so not worth it for a 5 min ride).

Well at the Jumbo Stay Hotel, there is an elevator mounted on the outside of the airplane which takes you and your luggage straight up to the reception, which is located inside the airplane. It turned out that my booking had not came through for some reason, but that wasn’t any problem at all. The guy working there was really nice and got me a room straight away anyway. Breakfast is available from 03:00 to 08:00. They have dorms for about 35 euro and private rooms from 50 euro. It is not much of a luxurious place but they even have a little cafeteria. It is simple but it is a budget place. Some of the rooms are really just like sleeping cabins and it is pretty thin walls. But there are some special rooms, like inside the jet turbin engines out on the wings or in the cockpit for example. There is wi-fi but the bathrooms are shared. You check out at 10:00 by just leaving your key card in a basket when you leave. There is no one working in the reception at that time of the day. An interesting experience which I can recommend.