Inside the Volunteer Effort to Fly the First Lear Jet Again

In a hangar in Wichita, Kansas, a bare aluminum fuselage sits on jacks, stripped down to little more than its skeleton. To those who have had the chance to see the aircraft in between work sessions, it might look like junk.

But to the volunteers, the “skeleton” feels closer to a relic, one that they’ve spent thousands of hours trying to bring back to the sky.

The airplane is Lear Jet 23-003, the first purpose-built business jet ever assembled. The people working on it are part of the Classic Lear Jet Foundation (CLJF), a Wichita-based 501(c)(3) non-profit with a single, ambitious mission: to make this 62-year-old aircraft airworthy again.

A Phone Call

In early 2022, a retired Lear Jet engineer got a call out of the blue asking whether he’d be interested in buying a Lear Jet. That aircraft was 23-003, then sitting in Bartow, Florida. He looped in a handful of other Lear Jet veterans, and together they decided the aircraft was worth saving.

Chris Marshall, a Board Member at the Foundation, recounted his experience from that day: “We applied the voltage to the power plug and went in, and the avionics woke up – it was just like it had maybe been parked the day before. We got in the cockpit, and all the electronics came on, and it was acting like it was ready to go.”

By early 2023, a crew had disassembled the jet and loaded it on a flatbed to be driven back to Wichita, the city where it was originally built.

The organization itself was incorporated that September, but the real work didn’t begin until the fall of 2024, once a long-term hosting agreement was finally in place. Since then, volunteers have stripped the paint, gutted the interior, cleared out decades-old spray foam insulation, and run X-ray and other non-destructive inspections to see exactly what they are working with.

The tally so far? 2,747 man-hours and counting, on an airplane that is, for now, still but a shell.

A Growing List of Partners

Working to restore a jet from this time means chasing down components that haven’t been manufactured in decades. The Foundation has leaned on a network of partners to make this possible.

International Turbine Industries in Michigan is overhauling the engines. Dodson International Parts – visited by Foundation leadership in Rantoul, Kansas, this past June – is supplying spare parts, including a donor fuselage and wing. Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University signed a formal agreement in May 2026 to rebuild the landing gear. And hydraulic actuators from that same system were recently handed off to Noble Jet for testing.

One of CLJF’s board members, Larry Thimmesch, is a Wichita native with a resume spanning Boeing, Lear Jet, Bell Helicopter, and GE Aviation’s work on China’s COMAC C919. He also serves as an executive at Incora, a supply chain firm that keeps the volunteers stocked with wiring, fasteners, and switches.

Why So Much Devotion?

The obsession makes more sense once you understand what 23-003 represents. Bill Lear, who never finished high school but held more than 150 patents and won the Collier Trophy, built and certified the original Lear Jet Model 23 largely with his own money, effectively inventing the business jet category in the process.

“The Learjet was a phenomenon in the market for the first several years,” said Rick Rowe, At-Large Board Member and PR Director at CLJF. “The next manufacturer in Wichita that responded with any kind of a similar product was Cessna, and it was eight years later. So for those first eight years, the Learjet was the market phenomenon.” 

The tail number that once graced 23-003, N200Y, later ended up on a different Lear Jet, the one Arnold Palmer flew around the world in 1976 to mark America’s Bicentennial. Both aircraft, it turns out, were bought new by the same Cincinnati collector, a coincidence that ties 23-003 directly into one of Lear Jet’s most famous publicity stunts.

Now, decades later, that same registration has found its way back to 23-003, which is being restored to wear the N200Y markings once again.

A Living History

For CLJF’s volunteers, the restoration has a deeper meaning beyond the metal. Many of the people donating their time spent entire careers working for Lear Jet, and the Foundation sees the project as a way of making sure that work isn’t forgotten.

Marshall put it plainly: “Those folks who spent careers of 35-40 years working for Lear Jet don’t want their work and contributions to the aviation world to be forgotten. So we’re remembering that, and we’re remembering those lessons to honor the people who worked so hard to make the company as important as it was.”

The Foundation frames the restoration as a tribute to that workforce first, and to the airplane second. Bringing 23-003 back to the air is a way of honoring the people who built Wichita into a business jet manufacturing hub, and of using Bill Lear’s own story as a case study in entrepreneurship for the next generation of aeronautical engineers.

Looking Ahead

None of this happens without volunteers, and the Foundation is candid about what it still needs: certified A&P mechanics to sign off on maintenance, a project manager to help steer the restoration, and help tracking down old service bulletins and modification kits.

Volunteers come from every corner of the aviation world; some are retired Lear Jet employees, while others have never worked in the industry at all.

Funding comes from donations, memberships, and a recently relaunched online store, with all profits from merchandise sales going directly toward the restoration. For an organization built around a single airplane, the ambitions are notably public-facing: school visits, museum partnerships, and steady updates meant to keep the community invested in watching 23-003 fly again.

Whether that happens in a few years or in the next decade, the Foundation’s volunteers seem unbothered by the timeline. As said by Rowe, “When 23-003 takes off for its second first flight, it will be a message to the rest of the world that things can come back to life.”

For those attending the Farnborough Airshow this week, you can learn more about the Classic Lear Jet Foundation at Stand #4605 or by visiting https://www.classiclear.org/.