Jumbo jet’s end nears as Delta retires 747 from fleet
Test pilots then put each new plane through its paces on an adjacent airstrip, before sending it off to roam the globe.
This airplane, more than any other, made long-range travel a mass-market phenomenon. And now, one of the jets born here is returning home.
Delta Air Lines will fly a 747 filled with employees and customers from its Detroit hub to Boeing’s plant in Everett, in Washington.
It’s the first in a series of farewell flights to Delta hubs this week, marking the end of the airliner’s US passenger service. There’s poignancy: With just 14 unfilled orders in Boeing’s backlog, and four-engine aircraft out of favour, the future isn’t bright for jumbo jetliners, such as the old 747. Just last week, Delta ordered 100 jets from Airbus, Boeing’s rival. And a trade fight between the US planemaker and Bombardier threatens to foul up a separate deal that’s key to Delta’s fleet plans.
A generation came to learn the aircraft’s quirks, such as the jet’s bulbous nose. There was also the fascination, never lost for some, of ascending a staircase to ride high above the world in the ‘bubble,’ the deck behind the cockpit. The planes could hold 370 passengers, including 66 in first-class and six in those penthouse seats up the stairs.
The design made it literally a wide-body, which became a moniker for long-range aircraft.
“It’s one of two seminal airplanes,” said George Hamlin, an aerospace consultant. But it was the long-haul capability — a 6,000-mile reach — that made the 747 transformational.
“The range of the plane allowed it to go anywhere in the world,” said Michael Lombardi, Boeing’s corporate historian. The peak year of the 747 was 2002, when the airplane completed 33,000 flights, hauling 10.5m passengers on 50 airlines.
All told, 1,540 Boeing aircraft have been delivered since 1969. “It was the plane that shrank the world. That is the legacy of the 747,” Mr Lombardi said.
Boeing created the plant in Everett — the largest building on the planet, by volume — just to build the 747, and the same facility eventually turned out such wide-body successors as the 767, 777, and 787 Dreamliner.
Boeing eventually created the best-selling 747 model.
Outside of the US, however, there will still be plenty of 747s carrying passengers: British Airways, Korean Air, and Lufthansa are all big operators.
But over the past 10 years, sales of the latest Boeing 747 model have dwindled, and the jet’s future will be as a freighter.
