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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."
Come on editors. I know this site is US centric, but do we really need the flag waving? Aside from anything else it will polarise and divert the debate from the real topic, the 747.
Next time you're in an Airbus, note how the cabin floor flexes as the flight attendant walks by with the meal cart...
That doesn't happen on Boeing planes.
Flying higher and faster was always the right thing to be doing.
Says who?
Not if it takes an order of magnitude more fuel in an era where the airlines are nickel-and-diming you for each goddamned bag of peanuts.
If you think that supersonic airliners are so lucrative, why haven't you started a Kickstarter campaign to fund a new startup? You're sure to make buckets of coin.