AUBURN — A large commercial jet rarely seen in the local skies created a lot of buzz Friday morning and startled some when it skimmed the tops of trees and shook houses during a planned flyover of the Auburn-Lewiston Municipal Airport.

The Lufthansa Boeing 747-400 wide-body jet was en route to Oklahoma for a normal maintenance stop when the pilot took a brief detour to salute fellow employees working at the airport. The plane used a low approach and rocked the wings slightly to signify a wave, airport Manager Rick Lanman said.

The low approach was visible over Route 4 and Lake Auburn.

The runways at the A-L airport are too short for the 747-400 to land.

A crew of mechanics from Lufthansa Technik is working to refurbish the World War II-era Lockheed Super Star Constellation in a hangar at the airport. The plane being refurbished was once the flagship aircraft for the airline.

According to Lanman, the project, which began in 2008, is roughly 60 percent finished.

The airport posted a video of the 747-400 flyover on its Facebook page. 

The airport had a similar flyover in January 2014 when a Lufthansa 747 was retired.

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