MAXINE GORDON meets the Yorkshire couple who have turned a million pound jet into a luxury crash pad.

WITH its cream leather seats, wooden veneer and black and chrome accessories, this Hawker 700 jet oozes the sort of style befitting a James Bond movie. Originally worth around £10 million, in its heyday this eight-seater executive plane was at the beck and call of the Russian jet set.

Today, it sits in a field south of York, with no wings or engine – but a double bed, kitchenette and ensuite loo and wet room.

In a refurb that cost £20,000, it is the ultimate crash pad for clients of Julia and Martyn Wiseman, who run Condor Aviation on the former site of RAF Riccall.

Inside the neighbouring hanger-cum-workshop are 15 aircraft, in various state of repair and renovation. It's here that the couple make people's flights of fancy come true.

"People buy kits to make their own plane, but it can take 3,000 hours if you don't know what you are doing to finish the project," says Martyn, who also runs an engineering business in Hull.

Realistically, he adds, those 3,000 hours probably amount to about ten years of hard graft if you consider people will mostly work on their plane in their spare time.

"If you start when you retire, you might well die before it is finished," said Martyn. "We have the facilities and the people to turn it around in about six months."

And when people come to see their work in progress, says Martyn, they can stay on site, bedding down in the refitted Hawker jet.

It's not everyday someone attempts to turn a millionaire's plane into a des res. Channel 4 thought so too and featured the renovation on Amazing Spaces, its interiors series presented by British architect George Clarke.

George gave the end result an enthusiastic thumbs-up when he and his camera crew visited Martyn and Julia at the end of summer, praising the adventurous pair for pulling off the nigh impossible. He was particularly impressed how they'd manage to squeeze a double bed into the narrow cockpit and design a generous toilet and full-height shower room in the tail.

Julia came up with the idea of using a memory foam mattress for the bed, which is 4ft 6in at the top but tapers to a narrower dimension as it disappears into the tip of the cockpit. From a template, the mattress was cut to the correct shape, then upholstered in a cream fabric.

"That way, when the bed isn't made up, it still looks like a nice piece of furniture," she said.

Julia worked with colleague Leigh Parker on the rest of the interior, carefully matching the new ceiling with a cream suede fabric from the original walls and mocking up a warm-wood veneer for the kitchen area to tie in with the existing cabinet and drawers.

In order to put in a bathroom, Martyn cut out the base in the tail end of the plane, mounted it on steel girders, levelled it to the ground and covered it in wood cladding, which was painted white.

It was an ingenious way to add more headroom into the rear of the jet, thus allowing the installation of a generous-sized loo and shower room.

Style and comfort were the guiding words behind the project. "We don't compromise on anything... it would have to be the best we could do," said Martyn, who picked up the jet on eBay as "scrap" for £4,000.

Julia added: "We have a lovely home in South Cave and would not want to stay anywhere else that wasn't comfortable or invite anyone to stay to a place that wasn't comfortable."

Heating is provided by electric blowers in the skirting board under the kitchen and on the wall near the bed as well as from a heated towel rail in the shower room.

Julia knew the look she was after.

"I wanted it to have a Seventies feel, like an old James Bond film. If he was in a jet, this is what it would look like."

Find out more at: condorprojects.co.uk/aviation/