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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."
Typical dicenuts
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.
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As a frequent flyer, I'd much rather fly on an Airbus or a 777 than a 747. The 747 is noisy, it vibrates, and it's just generally unrefined. Sure it was an impressive plane several decades ago, when the competition was trijets like the DC10, but the world has moved on. 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.
'There's no substitute for cubic inches,' American race drivers used to say and the 747 expresses that truth in the air.
Not only is there a comma missing from that sentence, but it's there's no replacement for displacement. You ignoranus.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
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 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).
It depends which model of the 747 you're on. There's a big difference in terms of noise and vibration between a 747-400 and a 747-800. They may look very similar from outside, but there are massive differences in engines, as well as substantial refinements to the airframe on the later models.
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.
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I have no idea why the comparison between the Concorde and the 747 was even made in the first place. The 2 jets were made for entirely different purposes.
The Airbus A380 would be a better comparison, since it has the same intended purpose as the 747 (massive amount of seating and cargo space for cheap flights)
Also, Boeing was working on it's own version of a luxury supersonic competitor to the Concord (the Boeing 2707 SST), but the project ended up being cancelled before it was ever mass produced (mostly due to to all the sonic-boom issues related to flying over land)
Comparing the 747 to the Concorde is like comparing a double-decker bus to a stretch-ferrari limousine
Look, I'm an American but the summary is a ludicrous troll.
Some Americans, referring to untested new technologies, call it Scarebus.
Maybe some people working for Boeing. I've never once heard anyone use that term in my life.
There is still residual rivalry with the upstart European Airbus.
"Residual rivalry"? Uhh, no. Try huge and ongoing rivalry between the two biggest players in the industry. This is Coke v Pepsi. Ali v Fraser. Ford v GM. The notion that the rivalry isn't still alive and well is simply absurd.
"Upstart"? A company with revenue of 60 Billion Euros is hardly an upstart. For comparison Boeing has revenues of about $90 Billion. It may have been an upstart many decades ago but upstart isn't a description that has fit for a very long time.
A comparison to the European Concorde is illuminating.
No it really isn't. It would be hard for it to be less illuminating. The Concorde was an experiment that didn't work out as well as hoped and likely was a bit ahead of its time. Had it worked out better we might very well have seen more supersonic aircraft. It was truly a first of its kind. The 747 was in many ways far more conservative and conventional - just a bigger and incrementally improved version of stuff we mostly already knew how to do. We'd already made aircraft that large (see the B52 which is about the same size and came 15 years earlier) and while the 747 was impressive it wasn't unprecedented. Ask anyone if they'd rather fly on the Concorde or a 747 and I'm pretty sure you wouldn't find many takers for the 747.
Some thoughts regarding the 747:
* indeed, a biggie. It needed new infrastructure, as does the A380 now
* contender against the C-5 Galaxy for a military transport, against which it lost
* developed with money from the military, but nooo, never got subsidies (as is always held against Airbus)
* ultimately sank its first customer, Pan Am, as they never really recovered from the costs of introducing that airplane
I did fly it between Europe and the East Coast, early 90ies - not the kind of flight you want to have in Economy Class, when you're 1.90m tall.
Now, I usually only see cargo versions, heavily used by the local cargo airline (happens to be launch customer for the last few -F versions). They do seem to be quite happy with it, as they have been using successive versions exclusively for quite a while. The only exception I'm aware of were a few tests with an AN-124, the logistics side not being up to their standards.
Just yesterday, I showed videos of Nasa's Shuttle carrier, with Shuttle and F-18 escorts to my 5-year old son, who was quite impressed that this was for real.
according to my dad
Your dad is wrong.
The fundamental flaws in *every* SST are:
1) sonic booms (which make them banned everywhere over the US except over certain desert regions allocated to the Air Force for training/testing; similar rules almost certainly applied in Europe), and
2) fuel consumption: at supersonic speeds, they suck gas like it's going out of style.
Neither of those problems were even *close* to being solved in 1970.
Also, the Concorde was stunningly loud (violating all sorts of noise regulations), belched tons of soot, and it's range was limited, so it couldn't fly Pacific routes.
Thus, it was doomed from the start.
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Growing up I would go on an occasional flight with my parents, but because they were always short-haul local flights they were on a 737 or DC10 or similar. The 747 was always that huge plane I saw at the airport with that iconic top deck and I always wanted to fly in one.
Later I did finally get the opportunity to fly in a 747, and you might say that cattle-class is cattle class no matter what airplane you're flying in, but I always enjoyed flying in a 747 more than other aircraft, probably just for the nostalgia factor.
I do understand why the plane is going into retirement. Airlines don't want them anymore, they are too heavy and use more fuel than more modern planes and the large passenger capacity means that the airline has to fill more seats to make a profit on a flight, hence the reason that the slightly smaller 777 is more popular with airlines for long haul nowadays, and the big plane sales are going to the more modern airbus A380 and 787s now.
That said, I will always have a bit of a place in my heart for the 747 and will miss having the opportunity to fly in them.
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-At the time of the 747's creation AIRBUS was an upstart in the industry.
That was almost half a century ago. Referring to Airbus as an upstart at this point in time is just dumb. Calling it a "residual rivalry" is equally dumb since the companies are the two biggest and most intense rivals in the industry. It's almost a zero sum game between the two when it comes to getting sales since there are no other meaningful players in the large jet market at this time.
-Also at that time, there was debate within the industry as to which vehicle was the way forward: faster or larger.
And larger was the safe bet. We had built jets roughly the size of the 747 15 years before it hit the market. (see the B52 which was built in the early 1950s). The 747 was basically an incremental improvement on already proven technology. The Concorde was a much more risky bet on technology that had never been used in civil aviation.
The Concorde was an experiment really and it used technology that worked but probably wasn't sufficiently developed at the time. Had the engines been more efficient and able to supercruise the Concorde may have made more economic sense and had follow on aircraft. It served for nearly 30 years anyway so if it failed it didn't fail badly.
How times change. I just flew IAD to SAN on a 737 (not sure which model but i'm assuming a newer one). I remember when standard equipment for cross country routes was larger planes as well. I miss it, being crammed in to a 737 for 5 hours is not very enjoyable.
That's 2/3 of 1% of 1% of 1% of total passengers. (approx 5,700,000,000 according to the article).
Way to miss the point. Other than the single crash of Air France Flight 4590 at the end of its service life the Concorde had zero passenger deaths. That's almost 3 decades without a single fatality. Aviation is a safe way to travel, news at 11... Got any other pointless comparisons to make?
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.
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Now back to airplane talk
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
This is partly why one of the more common statistics is fatalities per passenger-mile.
I am fairly certain the 747 wins by a significant margin here as most 747 airframes were used more frequently than the Concorde (more flights per week) and typically flew longer distances (747 was a transpacific workhorse, Concorde was only used for transatlantic flights.)
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
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.
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3) There weren't enough rich people who wanted to fly it often enough to make it profitable.
Because people who are "heading for retirement" also keep going to work and working as usual. Sales are *much* lower this decade than they have been previously, if that trend continues at some point they stop selling entirely. Building a delivering happen long after selling so there's obviously a large lag.