What Happened To The Boeing 747?

Video from the channel CNBC about Boeing 747, linked on its Above Ten Thousand entry. Duration: 22:23. Language: English. Video type: Documentary.

The CNBC report reviews the history of the Boeing 747 as the last unit built, number 1,574, leaves the Everett, Washington factory bound for Atlas Air, which will use it as a freighter. It covers its development, entry into service, evolution, decline and what the end of production means for Boeing, with testimony from analysts, a former flight attendant and Captain Lynn Rippelmeyer.

In the heart of the jet age, after the 707, Pan Am asked Boeing for an aircraft twice the size. In 1966 it ordered 25 aircraft. A full double-deck design was initially considered but dropped due to the difficulty of evacuating around 500 passengers, and a wide-body two-aisle fuselage was chosen instead. New high-bypass engines made it possible. Boeing was simultaneously developing the supersonic 2707 and the 737, and bet the company on the program. Since the supersonics were expected to supersede it, the 747 was designed to be convertible into a freighter, with the flight deck raised to allow a nose that could open. Joe Sutter's team, nicknamed "The Incredibles," built it in 29 months. Pan Am made the first commercial flight in 1970, and 93 aircraft were delivered that year. The upper decks were used as lounges, the freighter version arrived in the early seventies with Lufthansa, the aircraft served as Air Force One and as NASA's Space Shuttle carrier from 1977, and in 1988 the 747-400 appeared, the best-selling version.

The 747 has carried more than 3.5 billion passengers. The 747-8 can fly 7,790 nautical miles with more than 450 passengers, and its list price in 2022 exceeded 400 million dollars. Its four-engine redundancy is presented as a safety advantage, although the aircraft was involved in tragedies such as Pan Am 103 and TWA 800. After the 1978 deregulation, the preference for direct flights and the efficiency of twin-engine jets gradually left it behind: it went from 28% of the world's wide-body passenger fleet in 1990 to 2% in 2022, and in cargo from 71% to 21%. The last passenger version was delivered to Korean Air in 2017, and in 2020 Boeing announced the end of the freighter. At the time of the report, 396 aircraft were still flying, mostly freighters, and Lufthansa operated 25.