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The Boeing 747 Is Heading For Retirement
schwit1 writes: After 45 years of service, Boeing's 747, the world's first jumbo jet, is finally facing retirement as airlines consider more modern planes for their fleets. The article gives a brief but detailed outline of the 747's history, and why passengers and pilots still love it. From the article: "The 747 was America at its proud and uncontaminated best. 'There's no substitute for cubic inches,' American race drivers used to say and the 747 expresses that truth in the air. There is still residual rivalry with the upstart European Airbus. Some Americans, referring to untested new technologies, call it Scarebus. There's an old saying: 'If it ain't Boeing, I ain't going.' A comparison to the European Concorde is illuminating. The supersonic Anglo-French plane was an elite project created for elite passengers to travel in near space with the curvature of the Earth on one hand and a glass of first growth claret on the other. The 747 was mass-market, proletarianising the jet set. It was Coke, not grand cru and it was designed by a man named Joe. Thus, the 747's active life was about twice that of Concorde."
That "summary" is just a rambling pile of words.
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The current trend in the airline sector seems to be away from the very large aircraft. The A380 is tanking in sales terms (only Emirates has really plunged into that market) and there's talk that Airbus might look to drop the line sooner rather than later.
The A380 isn't being dropped, there will be a new engine version of it launched later this year at the Dubai Air Show, with its production life extended well into the 2020s.
The problem with those ultra-large aircraft is that they can be thirsty in terms of fuel, crew-intensive and, except on a small number of really "thick" routes, quite hard to fill. With the airline business mostly operating on quite thin margins, efficiency matters and the smaller, single-deck planes are looking better in that regard right now.
Would it surprise you to know that the Boeing 777-9X is actually destined to be a larger aircraft than the Boeing 747-8I? Its longer, taller and has greater wingspan, with the lower MTOW only really coming from advances in materials allowing lower weight structures.
Concorde was actually banned from all US airports for a short time in the early 1970s, until legal challenges forced various airports to rescind their bans.
The Boeing 707 was also louder and produced more exhaust smoke than Concorde ever did, and yet no one had issues with them operating at US airports ;)
"There's no substitute for cubic inches," goes at least back to the 1950's, as shown by this Car & Driver article from 1957. I suspect the one you use came later, and developed as a cute rephrasing. But you're free to try and find a reference dating to before 1957.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
You really want to go on making pointless comparisons between completely different planes?
This is Slashdot you know.
The Concorde is fscking awesome.
The 747 is likewise fscking awesome
two different planes, two different purposes. The US SST was likely canceled because it didn't quite fit in with the majority of overland domestic flying - not because we"re toothless fat gun totin racists.
And the Concorde was more likely carries forward because it was a design that worked well for over ocean flights for people in a hurry, and with means. Not because the French are Cheeze eatin' Surrender Monkeys.
When the hell is Jesus going to bring the bacon?
Now back to airplane talk
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
The early 707s were SCREAMERS. They had a high-pitched whine that made you hold your ears when they flew over. And that was just landings, I can't even imagine take-offs. As a kid, I lived in a place called Rosedale, just a few miles from JFK airport in Queens NYC.
The Concorde however, was a lower rumble. On landing, they weren't terribly noisy, although you heard them further out and the sound was so distinctive you knew it was coming at least 5 minutes ahead of it being visible. And what a sight! They came in at a high angle of attack, very nose-high, and with the beak of the plane drooped, and the landing gear extended, the plane looked like some kind of bird of prey about to swoop down and grab a mouse off a field.
It does need to be noted that Concorde flew mostly while turbofans were the norm, so most planes were quieter than it. The 707 flew when most other planes were still prop-driven, and it was only in the first few years of Concorde operation that 707s still flew (they were being phased out); but even by that time, they had made some changes to the engines to make the 707s less screechy.
That said, every plane had a distinctive engine sound, and if you lived in my area long enough, you could learn to identify which plane was flying over you simply from the sound. It got to the point where I never even had to look up, and I could name every aircraft coming over the house.
If telephones are outlawed, then only outlaws will have telephones.
No they banned it because nobody living under the flight path wanted it flying overhead. I used to live under Concorde's flight path in the UK. I lived in Reading. Thirty miles from Heathrow. I don't even know if it was actually supersonic when it got overhead, I just know it was impossible to hear the TV, the other person on the phone, or hold a conversation with anyone nearby then it did.
I can tell you, right now, that if it had become the norm and most mid-to-long distance flights were on Concorde, it would have been hell for HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS of people.
It's a good thing it failed. Much as I liked the concept.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Total sales over the last ten years don't seem that relevant to the "heading for retirement" claim. Just like total profits over the last ten years don't mean anything when considering if a company is growing or shrinking.
You need to see how the numbers are changing since "heading" is a claim about the direction of change not the quantities.
So taking orders (rather than deliveries since we care about the future) from 2005 through 2014 (2015 isn't done yet) we get - there are negatives because you can cancel:
747: 43, 72, 21, 3, 2, -1, -1, 1, 12, 0
380: 20, 7, 23, 9, 4, 32, 19, 9, 42, 13
To smooth things more for the 747 (380s are too new to bother) the 5 year order totals for 747s starting with 1966-70 and ending with 2010-15 are:
198, 103, 253, 126, 377, 104, 168, 90, 97, 16
Sure 2015 isn't over yet, maybe they'll get 80 orders in the next few months (making for their 2nd highest ever year) but that doesn't seem likely. However, orders have clearly plummeted in the last 5 years (lucky you picked 10 to use to hit the bumper year of 2006).
And yes given those order numbers "on the way out" seems reasonable enough.