The Boeing 747, one of the world’s most famous jumbo jets.
It revolutionized air travel and was dubbed the “Queen of the Sky” for more than 50 years.
▲ Air China’s Boeing 747-8.
On Tuesday local time, the last Boeing 747 was delivered at the factory in Washington state.
There will be no more aircraft of this series coming out, and an era has come to an end.
final farewell
The Boeing Everett Plant, located in Everett, Washington State, USA, is the largest factory in the world and is where the Boeing 747 is manufactured.
On February 9, 1969, the first Boeing 747 made its maiden flight from the Everett factory.
▲ The Boeing 747 factory in the late 1980s.
In the ensuing 54 years, the Boeing 747 series has gone through multiple generations, and a total of 1,574 aircraft have been delivered to more than 100 airlines.
On Tuesday afternoon local time, January 31, 2023, the last Boeing 747, aircraft number 1,574, was delivered to the cargo company Atlas Air.
Thousands of current and former Boeing employees gathered at the Everett factory to stand at the starting point of the first Boeing 747 and bid farewell to the last Boeing 747.
This is a 747-8F freighter with a sticker commemorating Joe Sutter, the father of the Boeing 747, on the front right.
One of the best-known jetliners, the Boeing 747 makes international travel and air cargo easier with its four powerful engines and massive passenger capacity.
But now, we have to say goodbye to it.
In a Fast Company report , one airline industry analyst lamented:
If you love this industry, you dread this moment. Nobody wants a four-engined airliner anymore, but that doesn’t take away from the aircraft’s great contribution to the development of the industry or its extraordinary legacy.
queen of air
Boeing 747, also known as Jumbo Airliner (transliteration of Jumbo Jet, originally means large jet airliner), is the world’s first mass-produced dual-aisle wide-body jet airliner, with a maximum passenger capacity of 524 passengers.
The Boeing 747 fuselage is 68.5 meters long, the tail is as high as a six-story building, travels the length of three football fields per second, and the aircraft’s wingspan is longer than the Wright Brothers’ first flight distance.
The design of the second cabin and raising the cockpit gives the Boeing 747 its iconic “hump”, so it is also called “whale”.
Only the front half of the Boeing 747 is a double-deck cabin. Some airlines have turned the second-deck cabin into a first-class cocktail lounge, and the first-deck cabin sometimes has a lounge or even a piano bar.
Before Airbus’s A380 entered service in 2007, the Boeing 747 held the record for the world’s highest passenger-carrying aircraft for 37 years, and was given a romantic nickname – Queen of the Sky.
The Boeing 747 has significantly increased the passenger capacity of civil aviation, reduced the cost and price of air tickets, connected cities that had never had direct flights before, and also contributed to the relaxation of air travel controls in the late 1970s, making it possible for the general public to travel around the world .
Air France-KLM CEO Ben Smith told Reuters that the Boeing 747 has brought air travel to the American middle class:
Before the 747, the average family couldn’t afford to fly from the US to Europe.
The passengers who boarded this plane in the early years had unprecedented diversity, some were well-dressed, and some emptied their wallets to buy tickets.
In addition to large passenger aircraft, the Boeing 747 is also used as a cargo aircraft, Air Force One presidential plane and a transport aircraft for NASA’s space shuttle.
The Boeing 747 was born from a conversation in 1965.
At the time, Pan Am launched the first commercial jet service with the Boeing 707. But Juan Tripp, Pan Am’s president, doesn’t think it should stop there.
He approached then-Boeing CEO Bill Allen, hoping that Boeing could build a bigger plane.
Some 50,000 Boeing employees worked on the project under the leadership of chief designer Joe Sutter.
Just building the Everett factory, where the Boeing 747 is built, required moving as much earth as digging the Panama Canal. By volume, this is the largest building in the world.
▲ In 1972, a Boeing 747-200 being assembled.
Eventually, in less than 28 months, they built the Boeing 747.
Since then, Boeing 747 series aircraft have occupied most of the sky, almost contracting the trans-Pacific journey.
The Boeing 747 also shaped pop culture for a generation.
Singers sang it in ballads, the USPS put it on a 1999 postage stamp, and novelists likened it to the Parthenon for their influence on mathematics, aesthetics, and the human worldview.
dim crown
In its more than 50 years of history, Boeing 747 has experienced many changes in the world.
In 1970, the first Boeing 747 flew Pan Am’s New York-London route, achieving its first commercial flight. This was not a good time. The oil crisis and economic recession caused Boeing’s employee number to plummet from more than 100,000 to less than 40000.
The introduction of the Boeing 747-400 series in the late 1980s coincided with the economic boom in Asia in the early 1990s, when young backpackers flew from Los Angeles to Hong Kong in 747s.
The glory of the Boeing 747 in the civil aviation industry did not come to an end until the 2010s.
Production of Boeing’s 747 series has been declining for years.
In July 2017, the last Boeing 747 used as a passenger aircraft was delivered to Korean Air.
There is no other reason, considering profits and fuel efficiency, airlines want to replace four-engine jets with twin-engine aircraft such as Boeing 777 and Airbus A350.
Because of advances in technology, it is possible for the former to replicate the range and capacity of the latter at a lower cost .
Similarly, the A380, which broke Boeing’s 747 passenger record, has been discontinued because it consumes too much fuel and often cannot be fully loaded. Airbus delivered the last A380 to Emirates in December 2021, 14 years after its launch.
In June 2017, Boeing announced that it would stop producing the 747-8 for passenger use, but it will continue to produce the 747-8F for cargo use, as well as special models such as Air Force One and Boeing Commercial Airliner.
In 2020, due to the outbreak of the epidemic, the demand for air transportation plummeted. Boeing announced in July of that year that it would stop production of all 747 series aircraft in 2022.
In recent years, many airlines have bid farewell to the Boeing 747 due to rising costs due to rising oil prices and the impact of the epidemic.
United and Delta retired them before the pandemic, while Qantas and British Airways permanently grounded their 747s during 2020.
Although completely out of production, the Boeing 747 will not disappear from flight routes anytime soon.
The aircraft currently in service can still fly for decades, and they are mainly cargo aircraft. In addition, the US President’s special plane “Air Force One”, the two currently in service are converted from Boeing 747-200.
▲ Boeing VC-25 Air Force One in service since 1990.
As the Boeing 747 leaves the factory, the past saga comes to an end. Because technology evolves, obsolescence is a necessity.
When the Queen of the Air ends her reign, the Boeing 777X may take over. This is the latest model of the Boeing 777 series under development. Officials say it will be the world’s largest and most efficient twin-engine airliner, but it will not be delivered until at least 2025.
Even if eventually forgotten, the Boeing 747 remains one of the wonders of modern industry. For a long time to come, we will still see the huge trajectory of the queen of the sky as it travels across the sky.
Work email: [email protected]
#Welcome to pay attention to Aifaner’s official WeChat public account: Aifaner (WeChat ID: ifanr), more exciting content will be presented to you as soon as possible.
love fan |
Link to the original text ·
View Reviews ·
Sina Weibo
media reports
China Securities Network Ai Faner 36Kr Sina
Event Tracking
- 2023-02-01 Farewell to the legendary aviation Boeing 747, the “Queen of the Sky” officially closed
- 2023-01-25Boeing repeats quarterly loss, but still plans to increase aircraft production
- 2022-12-26Boeing and COMAC cooperate to develop sustainable aircraft cabin materials
- 2022-12-13 Boeing won the largest 787 aircraft order in history, and the buyer is United Airlines
- 2022-12-07 Boeing 747 will be officially discontinued, and the last one will be delivered next month
This article is transferred from: https://readhub.cn/topic/8n3h94HggYU
This site is only for collection, and the copyright belongs to the original author.