If you, like many others, were captivated by the summer 2022 blockbuster Top Gun: Maverick, and you’re a home buff like we are, you might’ve noticed one pretty cool detail in the film. Maverick, played by Tom Cruise, lives in the aircraft-lover’s dream home: an aircraft hangar where he also parks his vintage World War II plane. (Fun fact: that P-51 Mustang actually belongs to Cruise, who earned his pilot’s license after filming the original 1986 Top Gun.)

But is living in an aircraft hangar actually possible? Yes—but there are caveats.

“The challenges of building a live-work hangar all stem around local zoning codes,” says architect James McGarry, who designed a live-work hangar called the Banman Hangar in Ventura County, California. Because that project is attached to a small, private suburban airport, the local zoning laws worked in his favor.

The bigger hurdle is the regulations set by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). “Federally funded and regulated airports do not allow hangars to be residences,” says McGarry. Given that more than 1,000 airports were granted funding by the FAA in 2022, that eliminates quite a few opportunities for a hangar home.

The official FAA policy on non-aeronautical hangar use does, however, include a few residential exceptions. Notably, remote airports may have an “on-airport residence for a full-time airport manager, watchman, or airport…