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The Flying Giant Is 40 Years Old
Ponca City, We love you writes "Four decades ago, Boeing's prototype 747 took to the skies over Washington State for a 75-minute flight that helped bring cheap airline travel to millions of people and would remain the world's largest commercial aircraft for 37 years until the advent of the double-decker Airbus A380. What made the 747 unique was that it was the first 'wide body' aircraft with more than one aisle — a big step towards reducing the sense of traveling in a narrow tube, and inducing a sense more equivalent to flying in a large room with high ceilings. But back in the 1960s, convincing people that the 747 would fly was a tough call. Joe Sutter, the director of engineering on the project, even spent an hour with Charles Lindbergh, going over all the data to prove that the jumbo would not flip over or become unstable at high speeds. Boeing has sold more than 1,400 jumbos in the past four decades, worth, at today's prices, more than $350 billion and although we might complain of traveling in 'cattle class' we have the 747 to thank for being able to do so at affordable prices."
It used to be fun to fly, not any more.
Is this thing on? Check. Check.
Four decades ago:
747 and concorde launched, first manned moon landing. 40 years later, NASA can barely keep the ISS running (or the shuttle from blowing up).
I'm curious - how much better are the new planes compared to the 60s version of the 747 in terms of range, payload and efficiency?
...Boeing will fire 10,000 workers!
I don't say this to troll. I work in the aerospace industry and am watching bright, talented friends and coworkers get laid off left and right.
FYI,
Standard cruise on a 747 is .85 Mach (567MPH) and a 777 is .84 Mach (560MPH).
Both of these planes are capable of much greater speeds, the limiting factor..... the sound barrier. They are not designed for the shock wave build up such speeds will generate.
If you were watching the NatGeo special on Air Force One, you'd of saw the interview with the Air Cap F-16 pilot who had to radio AF1 to actually slow down so he could limit his fuel burn. AF1 was cruising at .90 Mach at the time.
Don't think for a second these lumbering giants can't get up and move... Those cruise speeds are chosen for maximum efficiency and to limit air frame fatigue.
If the A380 is a modernised 747 'knockoff', then the Boeing 787 is a modernised Airbus A300 'knockoff'. Doesn't detract from the fact that either plane is simply fantastic.
Consumers have voted with their dollars, and apparently they prefer traveling in "cattle class" to traveling on the Concorde. Who are we to criticize the airline industry for giving the customer what they want?
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
what i mean by that is, to do better than the 747, one has to go faster further and cheaper. what mode of transport can outdo the 747 on all 3 counts at the same time?
the 747 is outdone by the concorde in terms of faster, but not further or cheaper. and so the concorde failed because in the end it was a niche tool for the rich: it offered marginally better speed for exorbitant increases in costs. we can't put a nuclear engine safely in an airplane, and so there is no cheaper for the immediate future
if we exclude extraterrestrial transport, transport on earth is pretty much at its zenith in our lifetimes. until some dramatic technological breakthroughs gives us a mode of transport that is, all at the same time, faster, further, and cheaper than the 747. in fact, on one count, further, the 747 can't really be topped. on that measure, the 747 pretty much is a dream: i, as a middle class westerner, can go anywhere on the earth i want in 24 hours. think about the history of mankind: that's a really incredible power. starting with us sitting on the back of horses, up through wheels, carriages, sails, the steam engine, rails, the ICE, jet engines... what else can there be?
so until someone invents a technology that can move us as far as the 747, perhaps 10x faster (to make an appreciable difference since 24 hours is a very comfortable amount of time to go to the other end of the globe), and perhaps 2x cheaper, we are in a golden age of transport that will not be surpassed for a very long time. we already have technologies like ramjets that are only used in exotic military applications, so really the bottleneck is cheaper fuel
until such future time, the 747 is the peak of human transportation technology
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Four decades ago:
747 and concorde launched, first manned moon landing. 40 years later, NASA can barely keep the ISS running (or the shuttle from blowing up).
During the jet age, it was all about higher performance. Higher speeds, higher altitudes, longer ranges, higher load capacities.
Aviation has matured, and now it's only about one thing: better efficiency. Our planes carry no more people than they used to. They go no faster or farther. Cost efficiency is the last frontier of a stable, mature... but boring... industry.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Wow, a whole hour devoted to analysing the plane's stability at high speeds? If that is correct, I'm amazed the plane flew at all.
It was a 1960's hour. You have to adjust for inflation and ADD in 2008, that's over a month in 2008 time.
Do you Gentoo!?
747-400 still has slightly longer range than 777. The longest flights are still on 747s - Newark NJ -> Singapore (nonstop). Chicago - Hong Kong (nonstop), etc etc. I prefer the 777 because they have more modern amenities in coach like seatback entertainment systems instead of a single giant screen for the whole cabin like its 1981 or something. *SOME* airlines (NOT UNITED) have actually upgraded their economy class on the widebodies in the past 20 years.
That was Tex Johnston and he actually did it twice.
The Boeing President was so mad at Tex, that he didn't speak to him for years. This barrel roll was done in front of potential buyers, which did impress them.
Remember that a commercial airplane is not designed for aerobatic maneuvers. Which means Tex had to maintain a 1G downward force during the roll to ensure fuel stayed in the bottom of the tanks.
The President was mad because the Company bet the future on the 707. If it didn't sell (and/or if Tex crashed), then the Company would have folded.
The same thing was true with the 747, the Company bet the farm on this one too. It is such a big investment of capital, that there is no room for failure.
The earliest use on UseNet was 1990, and the earliest mention in the New York Times is 1999. So I'm fairly certain Galen was the first inventor.
Today there is no supersonic passenger aircraft in service.
The economics of supersonic flight suck, although it wasn't apparent at the time.
I've read accounts that suggest the 747's raised flight deck was designed that way because it was assumed the primary purpose of the aircraft would be cargo hauling, and they wanted access to the full diameter of the fuselage without hinging the nose, as is often done in cargo aircraft. The reason why cargo was targeted was because everyone believed that supersonics were going to own the passenger transport market "once a few bugs were worked out."
It turns out those bugs--noise, engine sizing and fuel efficiency--are pretty difficult to work around, and cutting an five hour flight to two and a half hours isn't such a big deal when the time spent getting into and out of the airport are added in. It's more like cutting an eight hour experience to a five or six hour one. Not worth the price.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Nevertheless, since that first flight, the 747 has fulfilled the faith of its designers and has led to reductions in air fares, opening up air travel to many in a way that was previously unimaginable
The 747 was developed for the airline business before the Airline Deregulation Act signed into law by Jimmy Carter. Before that, it was profitable for the airlines to operate under the "hub and spoke" business model: condense a bunch of folks going to a certain destination at a hub and then send them all at once to said destination. Which worked at the time because because all the airlines had to follow Federal rules; which, by the way, the airlines really miss those Government regulations.
Now, the way to be profitabile in the air ravel business is smaller fuel efficient aircraft with schedules more like trucks: Atlanta to Fort Lauderdale to Tampa to New Orleans to Atlanta again - for example. Not get a bunch of people to go to Fort Lauderdale from Atlanta and go back. My point? Big jets for anything other than long haul (Ocean crossings) are not worth it. The 380 is not going to have the market Airbus thought it would have.
New York to San Francisco? Please. The airline that runs the most flights between those cities is going to get the lucrative business travellers; not the airline that has a slightly cheaper fare that runs once a day, at most. Those once a day airlines are going to get the tourist business and you know what those flights are going to be like for a 380: 2 hours to board because the tourists have to figure out where aisle '34' is and where seat 'H' is. And then they have to figure out where they're going to put their trunk that should be checked. Then they'll argue with the stewardess about how this is a carry on, while their little brat is screaming because they couldn't get their French Fries from McDonald's. Then the .....
In the meantime, rich fat cat Wall street Banker Federal Welfare receiver has his own jet and just sails over to San Francisco. Then the SOB has the nerve to comment on how your suit is wrinkled and how your tired and absent minded. ....
747s have broken the sound barrier on at least two occasions. One was during certification, and a second during a in-flight screw up on China Airlines 006. (Powered descent).
Both airframes survived.
With hindsight getting the civilian market was the bigger prize.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
The 747 was not the first double deck plane, there were several multiple deck aircraft before it - the Boeing 377 being an excellent example.
And you really are doing many many engineers a great disservice...
You are right, but only because the French and the Brit Govs wrote off the development costs.
"Concorde flew regular transatlantic flights from London Heathrow (British Airways) and Paris Charles de Gaulle (Air France) to New York JFK and Washington Dulles, profitably flying these routes at record speeds, in less than half the time of other airliners."
However:
"With only 20 aircraft ultimately built, the costly development phase represented a substantial economic loss. Additionally, Air France and British Airways were subsidised by their governments to buy the aircraft.
Wikipedia, of course, so it must be true.
But it did fail--initially. Boeing bet the farm on the 747 expecting ridership to increase. We entered a recession. It did not increase. Boeing went from 135,000 workers to 35,000 workers in the space of a few months. At the time Boeing was a one-horse show just like Seattle and the firm nearly went bankrupt. People left their homes to the banks and moved out of Seattle, Renton, Kent, and Auburn. Someone put up a billboard that said, "Will the last one to leave please turn out the lights." It took years for the local economy to recover. And the 747 caused it.
Today Seattle and Boeing are both very much more diversified. Anf yeah, Boeing is laying off a few thousand workers--but it's not 100,000 workers.
How about a moderation of -1 pedantic.
We have noise pollution laws for everything but aircraft.
You have no idea what you are talking about. Ten seconds on Google would get you to Title 14, Part 36 of the Code of Federal Regulations, "Noise Standards: Aircraft Type and Certification". All airplanes built in the United States are certified to this standard. Europe (EASA) has very similar regulations, and most of the other national regulatory bodies in the world pattern their regulations off of the FAA/EASA regulations.
That same FAA disregard for anything that might negatively impact total air passenger miles got us 9/11
Wait, what? Are you seriously implying that 9/11 was the FAA's fault? Citation please.
and continues to cause well documented health and mortality effects in areas around major airports.
Please point me in the direction of some of these "well documented ... effects."
Enlightened governments are re-locating their airports away from population centers and building fast and convenient light rail to make it convenient to get to them.
Light rail is awesome, and has nothing to do with the FAA.
Another thing government could be doing to balance the substantial subsidies air industries have enjoyed is divert some of those dollars to rail and R&D into quieter and more efficient aircraft.
Ok, but your ticket prices will go up.
Also, you asked for quieter and more efficient aircraft, so here you go.
Airlines are still focused overwhelmingly on the next quarter and the FAA doesn't care.
The FAA's job is not to make the airlines profitable. It's to make them safe.
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