Boeing 747-200B

The 747-100 with JT9D-3A engines had enough payload and range for medium-haul work but was marginal on the longest intercontinental sectors. Airlines quickly asked for more range and more payload, and Boeing answered with the -200: more powerful engines, a higher maximum take-off weight and more fuel, with design input from the KSSU consortium that KLM, SAS, Swissair and UTA had formed in 1968 to share training, maintenance and costs. The series came in four flavours: the -200B passenger aircraft, the -200F freighter, the -200C convertible and the -200M combi. The -200B, the basic passenger model, concentrated on fuel capacity and power. Boeing made a point of demonstrating payload early: the prototype -200B, a 747-251B built for Northwest Orient, first flew on 11 October 1970 and spent the following weeks in weight trials at Edwards Air Force Base, where on 12 November it took off at 820,700 lb (372.3 t), the highest take-off weight any aircraft had recorded until then, a mark later beaten only by heavier and more powerful 747-200s.

The FAA certified the -200B three weeks before the first delivery, which went to launch customer KLM on 16 January 1971. The Dutch carrier put it into revenue service on 14 February 1971 between Amsterdam and New York. For the first three years the only engine available was the Pratt & Whitney JT9D-7; over the life of the series the aircraft was also approved with the -7J, -7Q, -7AW, -70A and -7R4G2 variants. Full-passenger range started at more than 5,000 nautical miles (9,300 km) and reached 6,000 nautical miles (11,000 km) with the later engines. Two Japan Airlines -200Bs were fitted with extra tanks in the 1980s, taking fuel capacity from 158.8 to 164.1 short tons (144.1 to 148.9 t) for the airline's non-stop Executive Express service between Tokyo and New York. In 1976 the unit price was about $39 million.

The -200 was the first 747 to let customers choose between all three big engine makers. After launching with the JT9D-7, Boeing announced an agreement with General Electric on 1 August 1972 to certify the CF6-50; the engine was tested on the 747 prototype and the first civil CF6-powered 747, a -200M, was delivered to KLM in October 1975, with the CF6-50D and -50E approved. Rolls-Royce followed on 17 June 1975 with the RB211-524B, backed by a British Airways launch order for four aircraft, the first delivered on 16 June 1977; the first RB211-powered 747-200 had flown on 3 September 1976 and received FAA certification in May 1977. A Rolls-Royce installation had been proposed as early as 1967 or 1968 at the request of BOAC, which wanted British engines on its aircraft, but the failure in testing of the Hyfil carbon-fibre material intended for the fan blades pushed the idea back almost a decade. In its mature form the -200B engine catalogue ran from the JT9D-7R4G2 at 54,750 lbf (243.5 kN) to the CF6-50E2 at 52,500 lbf (233.5 kN) and the RB211-524D4 at 53,000 lbf (235.8 kN); the JT9D-7 series itself covered 46,300 to 50,000 lbf, with the JT9D-7Q reaching 53,000 lbf.

Externally the -200 is identical to the -100, with the same dimensions and the same hump, so the identification clues are subtle. A few -200s kept the three-window upper deck, but from the 147th aircraft, a -200B for Qantas, the ten-window-per-side layout became standard and was offered as a retrofit for earlier 747s. The horizontal stabiliser gained a curved leading edge. The substance was inside: reinforced wings, fuselage and landing gear for higher operating weights, up to 833,000 lb (378 t) against the -100's 735,000 lb, more fuel and an internally stretched upper deck seating up to 16. The systems followed the -100 school: four independent hydraulic systems at around 3,000 psi, a triple-redundant Carousel IV inertial navigation system, a two-axis autopilot with flight director and autothrottle, and a 16-wheel main landing gear. Against its siblings, the -200B lacked the hinged nose of the -200F, which could lift 105 short tons and had flown with Lufthansa since March 1972 after a first flight on 14 October 1971; it had neither the removable seating nor the nose door of the -200C, rolled out on 28 February 1973 and delivered to World Airways on 27 April, which Martinair used in the 1980s and 1990s as a passenger aircraft in summer and a freighter in winter; and it had no side cargo door like the -200M combi, which carried up to 238 passengers in three classes plus freight in the rear of the main deck, first flew on 18 November 1974 and reached Air Canada on 7 March 1975, building on the idea Sabena had pioneered in 1974 by converting its 747-100s.

When the line closed in 1991, 393 aircraft of the -200 series had been built: 225 -200Bs, 73 -200Fs, 13 -200Cs, 78 -200Ms and 4 military airframes. The last was a -200F for Nippon Cargo Airlines. The arrival of the 747-400 ended production of the whole Classic generation.

The -200B was the definitive flag-carrier 747 of the 1970s and 1980s: Pan Am, KLM, Lufthansa, British Airways, Qantas, Japan Airlines and many others built their intercontinental networks around it. JAL used the -100, -200 and -300 as its principal long-haul aircraft through those two decades. In the United States, of all the airlines that ordered the 747 at launch, only Northwest, Pan Am, TWA and United kept it in continuous operation into the late 1980s; Braniff ceased operations on 12 May 1982, and in 1984 Northwest bought two -200Bs that had been intended for Braniff. South African Airways, which launched the first 747 service by an African airline in December 1971, had to route its aircraft around the coast of the continent with stops at Luanda and Las Palmas, because other African countries had closed their airspace to it since 1963 in protest at apartheid. Iran Air retired the last passenger -200 in May 2016, 36 years after taking delivery, and in July 2019 five -200s were still flying as freighters.

In the 1980s Boeing offered the SUD conversion for the -200B, adding 280 inches of structure to the upper-deck cabin for 10 percent more capacity at the cost of only 2 percent more empty weight, with 5 percent less fuel burn per seat-mile, at brake-release weights between 775,000 lb (351,520 kg) and 833,000 lb (377,780 kg). Between September 1984 and March 1986 KLM converted all ten of its CF6-powered -200s this way, removing the upper half of the fuselage back to the wing leading edge and fitting the new section, and UTA converted two more. The result is easily mistaken for a 747-300.

Two modified 747-200Bs, tail numbers 28000 and 29000, have served as the US Air Force's VC-25As since 1990 and are the aircraft popularly known as Air Force One, fitted with secure communications, in-flight refuelling and defensive countermeasures; they are due to be replaced by VC-25Bs based on the 747-8. The -200B proved that a high-capacity four-engined jet could sustain profitable operations on the longest routes in the world and opened the way to the -300 and the -400.