A new LEGO® Icons set has just landed! 10360 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft is a 2417-piece set that recreates the space shuttle Enterprise and the modified Boeing 747™ that was used to transport it between missions. While LEGO has produced a great number of space shuttle sets in the past, this is the first time to see this specific shuttle in brick form. This is also the first official LEGO depiction of the Boeing 747.
Fasten your seat belts and check that overhead compartment because this jumbo jet is quite a ride!
Products in this article were gifted by The LEGO Group; the author's opinions are their own.
This article contains affiliate links to LEGO.com; we may get a small commission if you purchase.
10360 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft
- Release date: 15 May 2025
- Pieces: 2417
- US$ 229.99 on LEGO.com US
- CA$ 299.99 on LEGO.com Canada
- GB£ 199.99 on LEGO.com UK
- AU$ 349.99 on LEGO.com Australia
- NZ$ 399.99 on LEGO.com New Zealand
- DE€ 229,99 on LEGO.com Deutschland
- NL€ 229,99 on LEGO.com Nederland
- FR€ 229,99 on LEGO.com France
- PLN 999.99 on LEGO.com Polska
- NOK 2799,90 on LEGO.com Norge
- DKK 1799.95 on LEGO.com Danmark
New mould: LEGO part 7222
10360 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft contains 1 interesting new mould:
- 5x Landing Gear with Axle and Two Dual Wheels Holders in Light Bluish Gray (6528364 | 7222)
This new element was designed specifically for the set as a strong LEGO® Technic connection was needed to connect the trucks to the aircraft.
The new landing gear fits into the small family of elements of 'wheels holder' elements, among which Technic Pin with Dual Wheels Holder (61483, 66880) and Wheel Holder 2 x 2 Thin with Split Wheel Clip Pins (4870, 65361) seem to be the most closely related.
It might be a bit of a stretch, but I can imagine Plate Special 2 x 4 Thin 4 Holes, Struts and 2 Pins [Undercarriage] (42608, shown above top left) as a distant relative, performing the same function but at a much larger size.
This very specialised element has some interesting geometry. I wanted to see how the element fits into the LEGO grid, and as you can see in the image on the left, it doesn't. I'm guessing that since the element was designed to be used with wheels, the element had to be sized correctly to provide enough clearance. Thus, the axle sits just a little out of grid. The bottom of the axle to the straight edge between the pins is a smidge over 1 module.
The image above right shows that the sloping sides are just a little shallower than 45 degrees.
I think this element might have potential as an interesting space greeble. Here are some of the patterns I discovered with the element.
Using the pin as connection yields some fun tablescraps. I think the triangular one could have some structural use.
Recolours
The set offers a rather monochromatic selection of recoloured elements:
- 2x Flag 2 x 4 Triangle in White (6547154 | 5555)
- 2x Wedge Sloped 65° 2 x 2 x 2 Corner in Black (6547153 | 78886)
- 8x Plate 3 x 3 Corner in Light Bluish Gray (6547152 | 77844)
- 2x Plate 4 x 4 Corner in Light Bluish Gray (6547155 | 2639)
- 2x Plate Angled 3 x 3 with Heart Shape in Light Bluish Gray (6550549 | 39613)
The majority of white elements in this set appear to be of the new 426 White v.3 formulation, one of the two 'new' colours that Elspeth recently wrote about in her comprehensive article about the updated white and cool yellow. I took an old 2 x 4 tile from my collection (left) to compare to an element from the space shuttle (right) to check the difference for myself.
I'm not sure if I would have picked up on the colour change had it not been talked about here on the blog, but there does seem to be a some sort of intangible improvement in quality to these new white elements; it might be my imagination, but they do seem 'whiter' than I'm used to.
The Rambling Brick has examined the new white under UV light, for those of you who are interested.
Decorations
The decorations in set 10360 come courtesy of both printed and stickered elements.
- 1 Cone 4 x 4 x 2 Hollow No Studs with Dark Blue Thick Stripe print in White (6528987 | 4742pr)
- 1 Wedge Curved 10 x 3 Left with Dark Blue Thick Stripe and Black Windows print in White (6528988 | 50955),
- 1x Wedge Curved 10 x 3 Right with Dark Blue Thick Stripe and Black Windows print in White (6528989 | 50956pr),
- 1x Windscreen 2 x 4 Half Dome with Black Windows print in White (6550345 | 81911pr)
- 22x Slope Brick Curved 2 x 4 x 2/3 No Studs, with Bottom Tubes with Dark Blue Thick Stripe and Black Windows print in White (6528990 | 88930pr),
- 1x Plate Round 2 x 2 with Rounded Bottom [Boat Stud] with Dark Blue Semisircle print in White (6528986 | 2654pr).
This is the first time for the windscreen to appear in white, and remarkably, the same is true of the cone – an element that is now 40 years old. Hopefully some unprinted versions of these elements will appear somewhere in the future too, however these prints certainly will also find use in MOCs – especially the half-white/half-dark blue boat stud.
Sticker sheet
I'm usually a fan of sticker sheets; they provide us with the option to leave our parts blank for easier inclusion in MOCs. However I always have a hard time with transparent sticker sheets, like the one included in this set. No matter how hard I try, I'm always left with a greasy fingerprint or speck of dust under the sticker. I also find that opaque stickers are more forgiving to peel off and re-apply should they be misaligned; transparent stickers often end up creased in this situation.
I guess that the choice to include transparent stickers over opaque ones is for colour matching reasons; perhaps it was easier to provide colourless stickers than to match the white of the bricks when creating decorations for this set.
An upside is of course that you could repurpose these lovely designs on your own spaceship of any colour!
Rare elements
At time of writing, the following elements appear in 3 sets or fewer.
These elements can be found in just 1 other set:
- 2 x Technic Bush 1/2 Smooth with Axle Hole Semi-Reduced in Blue (6536559 | 32123b, 42136)
- 4 x Plate Special 2 x 2 with Bar Frame Round in White (6518048 | 7068)
- 2 x Wedge Sloped 2 x 5 Left in White (6482745 | 3504)
- 2 x Wedge Sloped 2 x 5 Right in White (6482744 | 3505)
- 2 x Slope 18° 2 x 1 x 2/3 in Light Bluish Gray (6493586 | 5404)
These elements appear in 2 other sets:
These elements are available in 3 other sets:
- 4 x Bracket 5 x 1 x 1 1/3 in Black (6484901 | 5712)
- 2 x Brick Round Corner, Curved 2 x 2 x 2/3 Quarter Circle in White (6516468 | 5852)
- 2 x Wedge Plate 8 x 3, 8° Left in White (6435246 | 3544)
- 2 x Wedge Plate 8 x 3, 8° Right in White (6435247 | 3545)
The LEGO® Enterprise space shuttle
The build
Assembling the space shuttle was mostly fairly simple but still provided a satisfying building experience. I have fond memories of 6339 Shuttle Launch Pad from my childhood and 6544 Shuttle Transcon 2 was one of my most coveted sets back then, so for me, assembling the Enterprise in this set was an experience tinged with nostalgia. But that was more than 25 years ago – how far the LEGO space shuttle has come!
There are some interesting stud reversal techniques; clips are clipped to bars upside down. It's clever, but noting we haven't seen before. The purpose of this will become apparent later.
The nose of the craft is nicely crafted with the slopes of the black recoloured wedges flowing in to the rest of the white bodywork.
The finished shuttle
The shuttle nails that LEGO aesthetic with a nice balance of smooth and studded surfaces.
Just like the real craft, the shuttle can be fitted with a cone to improve aerodynamics (very important for swooshing!) when it sits atop the 747. The real cone sat over the shuttle's thrusters but due to constraints when building with LEGO bricks, the thrusters are built as a removable assembly that can be swapped out for the cone.
The big 10 x 3 wedges work very well to approximate the cone and the new pendant flag element (5555) does some very clever and important gap-filling between them – look at how snugly that fits together!
The thruster unit is partially disassembled and stored within the shuttle, along with the landing gear – clever use of this otherwise redundant area of the model.
The Boeing 747™
The build
The shuttle is a mere warm-up for the main event: the massive Boeing 747.
Just like 10318 Concorde, as discussed in our review of set 10318 by Tom, the Boeing™ includes a handful of orange elements that are used to support the model and hold gears in place during assembly. These elements will later be removed and go unused in the finished model.
By the end of the second bag, we've already completed the mind-boggling mechanism for the rear landing gear.
This cutaway of the Boeing's nose give a rough idea of how the craft's bulbous cockpit is assembled. The most interesting thing here, though, is the front landing gear. Note the dark grey neck bracket used as a spacer to drop the wheels down by a half-plate. The plane is very back-heavy and has a tendency to tip back; this is the designers' attempt to address this balance issue.
Despite being a single pair of wheels, the front landing gear still makes use of the new landing gear element, although this time oriented at 90 degrees with the spare axles disguised with clips!
The foundations for the fuselage's new cylinder technique were laid much earlier in the build and with the installation of these sub-assemblies, everything (quite literally) clicks into place to reveal a satisfyingly smooth cylinder.
Given that the cylinder comes together with elements placed hundreds of steps apart, I made a reconstruction with my own bricks for a better understanding of how it works. The technique is reminiscent of the one used in LEGO® Ideas 92176 Saturn V.
The wings of the 747 sweep back at a 45 degree angle which is achieved by some seriously clever LEGO engineering. The axle holes on the brick assembly above provide the attachment point to the fuselage. Espresso filter elements (32828) are used to attach it to the wing assembly at 45 degrees. This bar connection also allows some rotation in the joint to allow the wings to sweep upwards as well.
Bars and clips connect the tail fin into place and angled with the use of a reflected triangle; the stepped positions of the attachments on the tail and fin are mirrored to create a 45 degree angle. The horizontal stabilisers, like the wings, are also angled, but this is achieved in a much simpler fashion with some angled LEGO Technic connectors.
The design of the stand is reminiscent of the one included in the Concorde set, albeit a little more simple and understated.
Here's another example of why I prefer opaque stickers to transparent ones; the white print of the information plaque stickers gets bit muted over the black elements onto which they are applied. I certainly would have preferred opaque stickers or – even better – prints for these designs.
The finished plane
The finished model is an impressive sight, not least because it's so big! At 63cm long and with a 53cm wingspan, I'll have to clear some shelf space for this beast.
The shaping is generally very well done: the plane looks great, with the smooth cylindrical fuselage and angled wings.
On a closer inspection the area around the cockpit might be considered a little rough, but it's very good by LEGO standards. I've seen some complaints about the dark blue cheatline running the length of the fuselage, but I think it looks pretty consistent.
The landing gear mechanism is truly mesmerising! Having the 5 trucks fold in and out simultaneously is an astonishing bit of LEGO engineering.
The completed 10360 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft
With all elements of the set combined, the two craft look majestic in mid-flight.
With the Boeing's landing gear deployed, the duo looks equally good in taxi mode.
Overall, this is a great looking model, if a little big; I'm honestly not sure where I'm going to keep it!
I applied stickers to just one side of the model to provide you with some idea of the difference made by the stickers. They certainly add an important finishing touch to the model and go some ways to break up the vast amounts of white. Ultimately, I think I would have rather seen a model depicting the Boeing in the American Airlines livery to provide bait more contrast between the two craft.
Conclusion
Given the constraints of the traditionally blocky medium, the design team have done a stellar job recreating the shuttle and plane in LEGO bricks. There are a few areas where the studs might have been smoothed over (particularly the Boeing's cockpit) and while I might have preferred the more colourful red, white, and blue American Airlines livery than the two stark white craft we get in the set, overall 10360 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft is a mighty impressive set.
Assembling the Boeing 747 was one of the most engaging builds I have experienced for quite some time, featuring incredible feats of LEGO aerospace engineering in the folding landing gear and wing connections. I certainly learned a thing or two and I'll carry some of the other more accessible techniques, such as the cylinder used in the plane's fuselage, into my own creations.
Also impressive is the size of the finished model. At over 60cm by 50cm by 25cm, this model will take up a considerable amount of display room. I've mentioned the size a lot, it's by no means a bad thing as it definitely helps to justify the price tag. For 229,99€/ US$229.99/ CA$299.99/ £199.99/ AU$349.99, the piece count is not unreasonable either.
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