Louisville Unearthed: The crashed airplane behind Headliners

That plane up there didn’t get there by accident. (Photo by Kevin Gibson)

It’s mostly covered by the trees today, but there’s a crashed airplane suspended from the hillside behind Headliners Music Hall.

As legend has it, sometime back in the 1980s, a lone pilot in a single engine aircraft flying over Louisville found himself unable to make it back to Standiford Field airport due to engine trouble. The red and white plane began careening toward earth, glided over the Irish Hill neighborhood and crashed into the hillside near Distillery Commons. Miraculously, the pilot was uninjured, and his plane was left behind as part of the landscaping.

Two things to note: Back then, Headliners was not Headliners. It originally was a sort of lunch hall for workers at the distillery. Also? The story about the crashed plane is completely untrue.

Yep, that account about the pilot and the crash is just the legendary story that has been told or at least speculated upon since the late 1980s. The true story behind that mysterious plane is that it was actually tied to an open-air nightclub atop Distillery Commons. One version of the legend is that the pilot was so happy to have survived, that he decided to open the club, which he called, appropriately, Cliffhanger’s.

The plane was actually placed there by the true owner of the club, who was looking for a way to attract attention to his new business and give his patrons something novel to gaze at while enjoying a tasty beverage.

The plane apparently was procured at a long-since-gone aviation salvage yard in southern Indiana, hoisted up the hill with a crane, and attached with cables. For a time, a mannequin dressed as a pilot hung from a deployed parachute attached to the plane.

Decades later, tattered and covered in graffiti, the plane still pokes from the trees that have grown up around it. In another 20 years, it will likely be completely overtaken as it rusts away or eventually falls from its perch. The good news is, the oddity still leaves visitors to Headliners wondering what the heck that thing is doing up there.

Every Friday, Louisville Unearthed will bring you an unusual fact, historical nugget, place, person, etc., that you may not know about our city.

A closer look at the plane from several years ago. (Courtesy of Unusual Kentucky)