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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."
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 747-800 is also finding things slow going. The hot sellers right now in the wide-bodied aircraft stakes seem to be the 777, 787 and A350.
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.
Plus the A380 requires specialised ground infrastructure at airports for efficient operation, which translates into limited operational flexibility and/or higher landing charges. Also its Code-F designation means that in theory, it requires runway/taxiway widths and separations etc to be built to higher standards (though many airports are using derogations for this right now).
The ultra-large aircraft may yet make a comeback, of course, but if they do, it's more likely to be a currently under-developed market where new very "thick" routes spring up (eg. domestic connections between Chinese cities).
... my first flight on a 747. It was 1973, on a nonstop flight from JFK to San Diego, as I jetted off to college. What a magnificent airplane! Definitely a room rather than a tube!
It's called 'context':
-At the time of the 747's creation AIRBUS was an upstart in the industry.
-Also at that time, there was debate within the industry as to which vehicle was the way forward: faster or larger. Though it's worth noting that Boeing hedged its bets, and worked on both kinds of design.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
In a way I'll still be kinda sad to see an icon of 20th century aviation go. It's also a far more elegant-looking on the outside than the A380. The A380 is pretty ugly front-on, but the 747 has nice lines.
It'll still be around for a while yet, as quite a few are operated by cargo lines as cargo jets. Watching one of those take off is pretty cool though: they rotate about halfway down the runway then stays in that position almost to the end before it gets enough lift to start gaining altitude. Looks like it's doing a wheelie down the runway. And funny you should bring up the A-380. A coworker of mine has promotional material from Boeing back from the 70s/80s where they were trying to push a fully double-decked 747. That design really is hideous no matter who makes it.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
the USA banned it from their airports out of jealousy before it had even flown
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Then what was that Concorde-looking plane that landed at my (US) city's international airport back around 1975, belching soot and making a thunderous noise?
No need for jealousy, when noise, soot, sonic booms and enormous fuel costs do a perfectly good job all by themselves of spiking the economic viability of the Concorde.
"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
He's comparing ONLY sales in the last 10 years.
So a 45-year old plane design (admittedly one that has had a few product refreshes, with another one in the pipes) has achieved more than 60% of the sales of a brand new one - despite supposedly being "headed for retirement".
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
A good few of those more recent 747 sales were the -8 Freighter. These are very popular with cargo lines.
A lot of the tech in those models is very uptodate. Certainly not 40+ year old tech.
I worked on building a flight simulator for the SAA B747 in 1971/72. I now work on servicing a fleet of 747-400's. There really is no comparison.
The Concorde however, was a lower rumble.
That said, every plane had a distinctive engine sound,
The distinctive sound of the Concorde was "so loud you can't think".
I used to work near Hampton Court, which was under the flight path for the Concorde out of Heathrow. It's also quite close, so the plane was on full dry thrust and not very far overhead. Many people in the office stopped work for a few minutes every day to watch it because, frankly, there wasn't any hope of getting any work done.
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