Boeing’s last 747 is rolling out of the factory

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/06/boeing-747-production-is-ending-with-shift-to-twin-engine-jets.html

by sebastian_z • 4 years ago

303 224 4 years ago

Hard not to feel nostalgic, as most of us on this forum probably associate the 747 with international air travel.

However time marches on, and it’s also nice to notice how much nicer and quieter the 787 and A350 are, not to mention more efficient.

justinator• 4 years ago

I think I associate it with the film, Snakes on a Plane.

malermeister2• 4 years ago

I miss A380s, to me they were the golden age of international travel. No other plane is quite as smooth!

romski• 4 years ago

Good thing they will be flying for the next 25 years!

midoridensha2• 4 years ago

They haven't gone anywhere. ANA has a bunch of them.

TillE• 4 years ago

They're so quiet, and relatively comfortable. For years I've gone out of my way to take the A380 between JFK and CDG, because it's the only way to fly transatlantic in economy without it being a complete misery.

I sort of understand the economics of why they don't work for shorter routes, but those long flights are still extremely necessary, and everything else is godawful.

switch007• 4 years ago

Emirates A380 every sector from UK to Oz and back in 2015 was a huge highlight of travel for me. They hadn’t done any obvious cost cutting and we got proper menus and silverware in economy. It was such a smooth flight and all the space on board to walk and stretch was fantastic.

silisili• 4 years ago

As a tall person, I miss the 747s if for nothing else the stairway area where you could stand and even walk around. They sure made sure to get rid of that nicety.

VeninVidiaVicii• 4 years ago

As a slightly above average height 6’1”, I’m finding it harder and harder to fit in most planes lately. Are they putting the seats closer together or something?

rayiner• 4 years ago

I find the 787 a downgrade from the 747 or 777. The 787 is noticeably smaller and lighter which makes for a less smooth and solid-feeling ride in turbulence. Whenever I fly International I try to look for a 747 or 777.

pb7• 4 years ago

The 787 simulates a much lower altitude and has more humid air I believe which makes recovering from long flights much easier in my experience. I look forward to the 777X which has the features of the 787 with the space of a 777.

EamonnMR• 4 years ago

747 was synonymous with big jet aircraft when I was a kid.

dclowd99012• 4 years ago

I think I’ve flown on a 747 maybe once in my life in a cross-US flight from LA to Florida. I remember being completely dazzled by the sheer number of people on the plane.

Recently I flew back from Europe on a 787 and that too was a wonderful experience. The plane feels like the future and was so comfortable and nice to be on.

kilroy123• 4 years ago

You think so? I would guess not. I'm in my late 30s. I only remember flying in one twice, and I fly way more than the average person.

I'm going to assume many people here have never flown on one.

avidphantasm• 4 years ago

Agree with this. Flew to Australia in 2015 on a 777. The return flight was on a 787. The increased air pressure and higher humidity made a huge difference in comfort and fatigue.

teewuane• 4 years ago

It's still a life goal of mine to ride on a 747.

FireBeyond• 4 years ago

Your best bet is Lufthansa for that.

CommieBobDole• 4 years ago

Better hurry, then. Looks like your best bets at this point are Korean Air or Lufthansa.

midoridensha2• 4 years ago

The A380 is better, and they're still in service as passenger aircraft.

chazeon• 4 years ago

Same here. 747s are everywhere in the literature I grew up with. They are also in news, games and films. But when I actually grown up, the time of those planes have lapsed. Now due to visa limitations, I am even harder to travel internationally, not to say to choose a specific plane to fly on.

jandrese• 4 years ago

It's the hump. That one little detail makes the plane iconic and memorable.

dehrmann• 4 years ago

My first ride was in a middle seat towards the back for a 10-hour flight. I don't recommend it as a bucket list item.

pram• 4 years ago

I rode one on an international flight in 2007 that seemed like pristine stock from the 70s. Still had a weird lounge on the second floor, and those awful headphones that are just like piped-in music. The seats still had the little ash trays in the armrest too. Quite an experience!

EDIT: heres what those headphones look like, they're literally just tubes that carry the sound from a tiny speaker in the armrest: https://static.flight-report.com/media/photos/jRkTcB8Xr0/IMG...

sam_goody• 4 years ago

Comments like yours remind me how everyone's life experience is different!

For various reasons, my family would fly back and forth between the U.S. and Europe, so I grew up flying thousands of miles a year on 747's.

The year I get married we decided to check out Israel, and flew twice! from NY -> Israel -> NY -> FL -> AZ -> NY -> ETC), with almost all legs on a 747.

In Phoenix I learnt to pilot a small plane, (and have sat in the pilot's seat of 747 without touching anything :)), and that's probably because of my rearing.

kevstev• 4 years ago

I did right before the pandemic coming back to NY from Germany on Lufthansa. I mean I am glad I did it just to have the experience, but you aren't really missing anything. I much prefer the 777. The 747, while having been updated over time, is still a 50 year old design at its core.

I have not flown on a 380, but the 777 is still my favorite plane to fly on, edging out the 787 even, though not by a whole lot- the increased comfort (higher pressure and humidity) in the cabin and reduced noise don't quite make up for the lack of spaciousness you feel inside a 777.

I personally have no desire to get on a 380, they just seem too big... like the tropey quote "They were so obsessed with whether they could, they didn't think of whether they should..." it just seems out of scale somehow.

Vecr• 4 years ago

Archive: https://archive.ph/X18JY

duxup3• 4 years ago

Very interesting how the 747 seemed to fit both passenger and cargo roles for so long.

Victerius2• 4 years ago

The C-130 Hercules platform says "Hello there!"

mnholt• 4 years ago

My passenger experience on a C-130 makes me believe they are optimized for cargo :)

duxup3• 4 years ago

I feel like the commercial market is a bit different ;)

alexanderchr2• 4 years ago

Boeing designed the plane to be easily convertible to a freighter because they expected the market for subsonic passenger travel to vanish during its lifetime. Sadly they didn’t get that one right but helps explain why it has done quite well as a freighter. For example the hump allows it to be loaded from the nose.

duxup3• 4 years ago

I didn't know the reasoning. Very interesting.

Kinda the opposite of the Airbus situation where they banked on a mostly single use plane plane that was all about moving a large volume of passengers a long distance and instead smaller planes took over and the plane was of little use beyond passengers.

andrewflnr2• 4 years ago

I saw one up close and personal for the first time recently, and was caught off guard by just how genuinely huge it is. I kind of expect things like "famously huge X" to be a disappointment in real life, but no, I was viscerally reminded that it's (at least!) a three-story building on wheels, and that's not even counting the extra story or so of space beneath it as it rolls. My younger airplane-obsessed self would have been pleased. Hopefully an air museum or three picks one up before they all go out of service.

evo• 4 years ago

I believe the Museum of Flight in Seattle has had the original production 747 for some time.

https://www.museumofflight.org/aircraft/boeing-747-121

lph• 4 years ago

Indeed they do, the "City of Everett". You can walk around inside. Boeing used it as a test bed for various experiments. The Museum of Flight is really a gem.

Boeing used to offer tours of the 747 factory. It's immense. I wonder if they're spinning up a different manufacturing line in that building?

labster• 4 years ago

If you’re impressed by genuinely large flying things, I can’t recommend the Kennedy Space Center enough. Just standing beneath one of the rockets is truly impressive. Just one of the stars painted on the side of vehicle assembly building is as tall as three Kerbals on top of each other wearing a trench coat and pretending to be one tall guy. Like wow!

emtel• 4 years ago

That stuff is cool, but nothing has ever blown my mind like seeing the spruce goose. It’s at the evergreen aviation museum outside of portland, and it’s impossible to believe how big it is.

KineticLensman• 4 years ago

I would also recommend standing underneath the upright Saturn 5 at Huntsville. Those engines are unbelievable.

akiselev2• 4 years ago

Wait until you see the Airbus Beluga [1] or Boeing Dreamlifter [2]!

I recommend going to the Davis-Monthan Air Force Boneyard in Tucson, AZ [3] and the nearby Pima Air & Space Museum [4] to see all the other big baddies.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_Beluga

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Dreamlifter

[3] https://www.airplaneboneyards.com/davis-monthan-afb-amarg-ai...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pima_Air_%26_Space_Museum

Quequau• 4 years ago

I look forward to seeing the replacement for the Antonov An-225, Mriya.

kkylin• 4 years ago

Sadly it seems the Boneyard tours are no longer:

https://pimaair.org/plan-your-visit/available-tours/

(They stopped at the onset of the pandemic and AFAIK never resumed.)

The museum is still well worth visiting, and driving around you can see some of the planes parked in the Boneyard. Davis-Monthan also puts on a pretty good airshow every couple years.

LargoLasskhyfv2• 4 years ago

Beluga isn't that special, if you live where they come and go daily, sometimes several times. Rather annoying, because loud. At least louder than an A380, which is really big, but not as loud.

fuzzythinker• 4 years ago

The BelugaXL resembles even more of a beluga https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_BelugaXL

anshumankmr• 4 years ago

The Beluga really looks ugly.

bowsamic5• 4 years ago

I live directly under the flight path for the Beluga's landing in the Hamburg airbus site, in a nice area north of the Elbe river.

One interesting thing about the Beluga: the pilots very often fail to land them and have to do multiple attempts! The Beluga landing is kind of loud, but it's nothing compared to the sound of the engines when they pull up after a failed attempt

rjsw• 4 years ago

I have been on two tours of the A380 final assembly building, the last time was with senior Airbus people so got basically the customer tour walking round the aircraft.

Have seen Belugas flying and on the ground at Toulouse.

iamgopal• 4 years ago

Just saw beluga at Mumbai airport, huge !!

turtledragonfly2• 4 years ago

Fun statistic: the Wright Bros' first flight was shorter than a 747 is from tip to tail. (their 4th flight was a bit longer, though)

function_seven• 4 years ago

My dad’s favorite line about it: If you put all the blueprints produced during the design of the 747, in the 747, it wouldn’t be able to take off.

The whole thing was designed on paper, with hordes of draftsmen drawing every single section, detail, etc.

I’m always impressed at how complex things could be with no CAD

jabl2• 4 years ago

I think the effect is partially due to all modern (well, jet age) airliners looking more or less the same at a glance. You can tell the 747 is larger than a, say, A320, because it has four engines and the second floor. But just how much larger the 747 is you see when they are parked beside each other.

vishnugupta• 4 years ago

I was used to seeing mostly smallish domestic flight planes up close and to me they seemed big but not imposing. Once I saw one of them parked next to 747, and boy was I blown away. The small plane's fuselage was sort of same size as the 747's engine; and 747 had four of those engines! That's when I realised how humongous 747 is. I still marvel at human agency; not only can they build structures as big as 747 it can also fly across continent, reliably and safely carry hundreds of passengers in total comfort.

Aperocky• 4 years ago

in total comfort.

That depends..

moloch-hai• 4 years ago

A 747 once carried more than 1000 people. No seats.

eastbound2• 4 years ago

What astonishes me is that they built the 747 first, before the small planes. It’s like Airbus’s birth was initiated with the Concorde, then the mass-passenger planes. All with negative timestamps, since we were before 01/01/1970 (joke).

Leaders of that time knew they had to start with the grandest project before cascading for a full range of smaller products; whereas leaders today roll out an MVP and try to grow from there.

It truly was another epoch, the epoch of mass amounts of money and resources, not little optimizations.

pbh101• 4 years ago

One of my favorite pictures is from 2007 when Boeing lined them all up and you can just how big the 747 is.

https://twistedsifter.com/2010/11/picture-of-the-day-boeing-...

mjg592• 4 years ago

The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Electric_GE9X used in the 777x (assuming it eventually gets certified) is significantly larger than the 747 engines. Even the engines used on the original 777 from the 90s outsize individual 747 engines, which is somewhat terrifying.

bongoman37• 4 years ago

This is true for many airplanes. The first time I saw the SR-71 I was shocked at how large it was. The photographs simply don't do them justice and often the pics that are used are those of the planes flying which have no items to set a scale with.

Anarch157a2• 4 years ago

For those wondwring, the Blackbird is the same lenght as a 737-600. So, the next time you board a 737, try to picture something that size going mach 3+...

caf• 4 years ago

I think there's quite a few in air museums - Qantas alone donated two of theirs to museums (the Qantas Founder's Museum and the HARS Aviation Museum).

LargoLasskhyfv2• 4 years ago

Hrm. Imagine living near to the flight path of an airport. Say something like 1.5km to the side of it, at which point they are about 400m high, going between 280 to 320kph, depending on the wind, and model.

One late evening, shortly before 23:00, where airport is closing for the night because of local noise restriction laws, except for emergencies, otherwise heavy fines, something wasn't on that glidepath.

Immersing me in it's landing lights from beneath, and somewhere in the middle from each wing. Flew erratically. Curve to the left and coming down really low, then UP, then going back right towards the normal path. Coming directly over me.

While doing that the wingtips vibrated by at least half a meter, making the position lights a blurred vertical line. Wasn't even that loud, just BIG!

If it wouldn't have done the reclimb and curving back towards the path, it would have crashed into the highrises next to me.

What was it? A 747 from UPS, clearly visible because the golden letters against the brown tail were illuminated.

Sat there at my desk, thinking WTF?! Are you doing VFR, or what?

nick4780167• 4 years ago

UPS always damages my packages or marks then delivered days ahead of the actual dropoff.

jcadam2• 4 years ago

Once lived very close to an Air Force Base that got quite a bit of C-17 traffic. Not the quietest place to live.

dzhiurgis• 4 years ago

I was so confused for a minute, thinking I’m reading about caterpillar smartphone

omnibrain• 4 years ago

If you are in Europe the Technik Museum Speyer has one: https://speyer.technik-museum.de/de/ And if you are in the general area, their sister museum in Sinsheim has a Concorde and its Russian counterpart.

rob744• 4 years ago

...and I bet they are already shopping around for an A380 to put beside the 747, similar to what they did with the Concorde and the TU-144.

joezydeco• 4 years ago

I've been inside the one in Speyer, it's really well done. And you can walk out on the wing.

ThinkingGuy• 4 years ago

The Delta Flight Museum at the Atlanta Airport has one on display that you can go on board and walk around inside. They've removed the the interior paneling in places so you can see the wiring and flight control cables.

https://www.deltamuseum.org/

cpursley• 4 years ago

Didn't realize this existed. Will have to check it out!

HorizonXP• 4 years ago

Yesterday, I took my 4-year-old son to la Musée de l'Air et de l'Espace in Paris so he could see and walk through a 747 in real-life. This was after flying to Frankfurt on a 787, and seeing a 747 and A380 on the tarmac there. He said, "I want to go on those ones."

Managed to fulfill the 747. La Musée had an A380 on the tarmac too, but not open to walk through.

Honestly, for aviation geeks, it's a worthwhile visit for the 747 and Concordes alone.

julienfr112• 4 years ago

Exactly. Inside the 747 luggage bay, there is a brand new Renault Twingo 1 from the mid 90's. The plane is so huge the car looks like a toy (it's small, but still a car...).

rafale• 4 years ago

I flew on the second floor of a 747. It felt posh for some reason. Also the flight was super smooth. I suppose its weight and sheer size helps with that.

nikau• 4 years ago

Qantas apparently had an unofficial 'no kids' policy for the upstairs business seats.

Also the storage bins along the walls due to the sharp angle were awesome if you had a window seat.

ddhhyy• 4 years ago

On most airlines the upper deck was originally used as lounge space, and then later for first/business class, which may have helped with the poshness you experienced.

In the early-mid 2010s I was fortunate to fly several times on the upper deck of an EVA Air 747 (SEA–TPE). On these planes, the upper deck was regular economy in a 3x3 configuration. It felt like a miniature 737 inside the huge 747, cozy in its own strange way. They also provided slippers and the window seats had a fun shelf/storage space, making it feel all the more special.

eastdakota• 4 years ago

My favorite seat was actually on the lower level. The furthest forward window seat on either side (usually 1A or 1K) was unique. It’s directly below the cockpit and the fuselage is curved at that point so you get the almost pilot-like view out the window of facing forward.

https://www.seatguru.com/airlines/Lufthansa/Lufthansa_Boeing...

moffkalast3• 4 years ago

Found a video of it and you can actually see the entire runway when landing, amazing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbhyHpQa-_E

pcurve2• 4 years ago

can you believe only 1500+ units have been made?

FabHK3• 4 years ago

And there have been 60+ hull losses, so one out of every 25 has been lost.

stevehawk• 4 years ago

Makes it sound like they're falling out of the sky. Some of those are as simple as "a hurricane damaged it while it was parked."

eastbound2• 4 years ago

Exactly 1574 = 787 x 2.

Meanwhile during MCAS affair, 400 units of 737 Max 8 were stuck to the ground and 300 more were in production if I remember correctly, which shows we were producing the old 747 at a much slower pace.

moffkalast3• 4 years ago

With a million more well on the way.

walrus013• 4 years ago

Meanwhile, the longest scheduled nonstop airline flights of 13,000 to 14,000 km are all operated with large twin engine aircraft:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest_flights#Scheduled_serv...

walrus013• 4 years ago

If anyone wants to buy a piece of a Boeing 747-400, this parting-out operator at a boneyard in California has a lot of stuff:

https://whaletailsales.com/

moffkalast3• 4 years ago

https://whaletailsales.com/products/747-400-cowl-single?_pos...

Haha, an entire engine cowl for 1.5k. I wonder how much shipping costs.

walrus013• 4 years ago

Probably quite a lot, the size is way too big for a standard pallet as LTL freight, so it would have to come by flatbed truck with a built-in small delivery crane, if you don't have your own huge forklift to get it off.

pfdietz• 4 years ago

The ability of the cargo version of the 747 to swing up the nose (that's why the cockpit is in the bulge on the top) will be missed. Cargo versions of currently produced airliners will not be capable of doing this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VZO8Lt78Go

rob744• 4 years ago

Actually, if you look at the graph in the article, you will see that the 747 would have probably been cancelled around 2006 already if it weren't for the freighter variants. From 2006 to 2012 they only delivered freighters.

fijiaarone• 4 years ago

Soon we will scoff at the idea that man should ever have flown.

cookiengineer• 4 years ago

I think that there's a lot of potential for ground effect vehicles/planes for island nations; as they're more easily scalable and still in the weight range of being feasible to work with electric motors as well.

As an example, the Fischer Airfish AF-8 can transport up to 8 passengers (+2 pilots) [1]. They're whitelabelled as Wigetworks Airfish around the Singaporean area [2]. The concept of the plane/boat hybrid is as old as 1997, which is kind of ridiculous [3].

[1] (German) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer_Airfish_AF-8

[2] https://www.wigetworks.com/airfish-8

[3] (German) https://www.fischer-flugmechanik.com/site/index.php?menu=rea...

jaclaz• 4 years ago

A related (past) thread:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32148657

but I believe that weather conditions limit greatly their use in many places.

FabHK3• 4 years ago

I sure hope not. Look, the problem is pollution of the environment due to dirty energy. Energy per se is not a problem, but the solution to many problems.

marvin• 4 years ago

We won't.

Hopefully we'll soon fly sustainably though, by sequestering CO2 equivalent to the flight emissions.

harry8• 4 years ago

IMHO the 747 is the tech that changed australia more than any other post the shock of european colonisation, conquest, settlement, whatever you want to call that.

The world suddenly got a lot smaller and closer. Visiting foreign lands became a thing accessible to a vastly larger proportion of the population and that was all most needed to get out there and see some of it.

Closely followed by satellite comms, then fibre, then the web & consumer internet. (Skype and its ilk).

The A380 is great and drew a crowd for its first landing in aus. Somehow its still not a Jumbo Jet for all that it is even bigger.

Which areoplane is winning the kilogram kilometers per Litre of jet fuel for long haul nowadays?

jabl2• 4 years ago

Which areoplane is winning the kilogram kilometers per Litre of jet fuel for long haul nowadays?

Pretty sure it would be A350, or B787, or one of the latest gen updated B777's. Basically stick the latest generation biggest super high bypass turbofans on a modern body with lots of composite construction to minimize weight.

sbradford26• 4 years ago

Soon the 777x will be out which should be the one to beat then. Last I saw they were running into some issues with the GE9x engines which are massive.

a-dub• 4 years ago

this is a little surreal. one of the first aircraft i ever flew on was a 747. in the 80s and 90s if you were on a long haul 6+ hour flight, it was likely a 747 (if not an L1011 or 767). it was notable for me personally as it was one of the most advanced feats of human ingenuity and engineering that i was able to get close to.

notably in the early 90s virgin atlantic was one of the first airlines to offer personal seatback video screens in economy on their 747s. the screens were backlit color lcd (similar to atari lynx), about 3.5" in diameter and had 6 or so channels that were on a four hour loop.

edit: here's a link to an image of one for the curious. wild how far we've come. https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1d5qij/virgin_atl...

it's a bit sad to see the program end, as it sort of marks the end of an era where the engineering feat of putting something that large in the sky was prized. i suppose that focusing on operating efficiency and environmental sustainability are far more important, but it's hard to not be nostalgic for the long running engineering triumphs of the jet age.

adunk• 4 years ago

According to the article, they built a total of 1574 planes. This number happens to be equal to 2 * 787. The significance of this would be that 787 is also the model number of one of Boeings current generation jetliner, the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. I, as a small-time-wannabe number nerd and small-time-wannabe airplane nerd, reacted positively when I happened to see this connection.

I have no idea if there is any intent behind this specific number of produced planes, but I suspect that there would be people at Boeing who feel the same kind of mild satisfaction as I did when I saw the number of aircraft produced.

deepGem• 4 years ago

I was fortunate enough to travel in a Lufthansa 747. I have never felt so joyously overwhelmed by any other vehicle. The newer A350s and A380s unfortunately don’t carry the same appeal for me personally.

The A380 looks real ugly for me resembling the beluga.

747 looks beautiful, majestic and aesthetically very pleasing.

Sad to see this plane approaching the end of its life.

Symbiote• 4 years ago

I've once travelled in an A380, and what impressed me most was how quiet and spacious it was, even in an economy seat.

FabHK3• 4 years ago

The 747 is nicer from the outside, the 380 is nicer from the inside.

spixy• 4 years ago

arent you mixing Airbus A380 with Airbus Beluga?

phreeza• 4 years ago

What blows my mind is that the grand ocean liners (Four Funnel Liners, like the Titanic) were all built over a span of 25 years. So the jet age is already at least twice as long as the era of production of those great steam ships was.

esskay• 4 years ago

I used to fly over to the US a couple of times a year for family holidays (from the UK) and almost always went on a 747, the difference in comfort was massive.

We often flew with a small little airline called 'Travel City Direct' who have since been merged into Virgin Atlantic. They leased two 747's from a charter company, one of them was all dolled up in their own livery, the other was just white and a looked super ropey on the outside...but inside it was still night and day a better experience than anything else.

We were fortunate enough to be in the 'bubble' on that one so had a great upstairs view - it was still only economy, but felt more like premium.

I later found out that the blank white plane we flew on so many times ended its days as the white 747 you used to see at Dunsfold - where Top Gear is filmed. Yep, that 747. The one they modified and used in the 007 film Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace to be the Skyfleet S570.

throwaheyy2• 4 years ago

I like the A380 because it’s so quiet and smooth, but if I had to deal with the 747 noise I had a soft spot for the Rolls-Royce RB211 engine like Qantas used on their 747-400 non-ERs. The triple stage turbofan spool-up sounded and felt awesome.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lx-xfwxbpwE

gsnedders2• 4 years ago

Have you flown on a 747-8I? I remember that being roughly comparable to a A380 in noise-terms, but definitely _vastly_ quieter than a 747-400.

throwaheyy2• 4 years ago

I have not, probably won’t get a chance to either as I think only two airlines are flying them.

cm21872• 4 years ago

The irony being that because air traffic keeps increasing and airport capacity doesn't (in term of runways), those cancelled jumbo jets (B747, A380) will be needed again in a few years.

rob744• 4 years ago

That's what Airbus thought too when they gave the A380 the go-ahead. Turns out they were wrong - the airlines moved towards a system with more direct flights and less "hub and spoke" connections, which makes it difficult to fill the largest widebodies. Instead they need more but smaller widebodies for the direct connections.

cm21872• 4 years ago

Understood. But again as traffic increases, those direct flights will themselves become a bottleneck, and there are so many fights you can run through a runway (with most major airports already at full capacity pre-covid). So at one point those planes will need to be bigger.

rconti• 4 years ago

In previous posts where the 747 has come up, I've been able to say that I once flew top deck on a 747 and what a privilege it was to do so before it ended service with U.S. carriers, not knowing how close I was to missing that chance forever.

And here I am, sitting in Berlin, reading this article about the last 747, happy in the knowledge that I will once again fly on the top deck of a 747 in exactly a week. Lufthansa's still flying them, and I could not pass up the $500 upgrade for the flight home.

I'll make sure to savor every moment.

encoderer2• 4 years ago

Wow I didn’t know that. That’s the best seat in public aviation.

selimthegrim• 4 years ago

Strange they’re not counting the two pending Air Force One deliveries

hestefisk• 4 years ago

Perhaps because they are not considered commercial flights and might be quite bespoke?

buildsjets2• 4 years ago

Those airframes were originally intended for delivery to a defunct Russian cargo airline. They were completed and rolled out of the factory years ago, sat in storage for a long time, and have already delivered from Boeing Commercial Airplanes to their initial customer, Boeing Defense, Space & Security, which is a different corporate entity.

sva_• 4 years ago

Reminds me of the Airbus A380. Insane if you stand in front of one. Also insane if you land in Dubai and see them by the dozens next to each other.

darrenf• 4 years ago

There are 3 retired 747s on an airfield 10 miles from my house (in Surrey, southern England). It isn’t open to the general public most of the time but two weeks ago I ran a charity 10km around the runways and perimeter roads. So beautiful to see these birds up close. You can get a feel for it on the gallery page of the run’s site: https://jigsaw.run/gallery/

WalterBright8• 4 years ago

My dad took me to the Frankfurt AM Flughafen observation lounge to watch the first 747 land there. Wow!

WalterBright8• 4 years ago

A shout out to J Burton Berlin, who designed the stab trim system on the 747. He mentored me a lot on the 757 system. He showed me his design notebook on the 747 design, quite a treasure. All done in pencil with a slide rule. An engineer's engineer. He had many entertaining stories about the B-47 design.

leetrout• 4 years ago

Walter it seems like you have had an amazing career!

Do you have anything online about your work at Boeing?

WalterBright8• 4 years ago

Not really. I suppose I should write it down, but it was a loooong time ago.

It was always a treat to hang around with Burt. The other engineer there who mentored me was Erwin Schweitzer, who'd take me flying with him (he was a pilot) and let me fly it once in a while. Burt and Erv were why I stayed at Boeing as long as I did.

Another engineer who took me flying was Ernie Spriggs. He hailed from Lockheed, and always went on about how great Lockheed was. I finally asked him "Ernie, if Lockheed was so great, why are you working at Boeing?" Ernie replied "because one day I told Mr. Lockheed he was a fucking asshole."

Good times.

P.S. What you suspect is true. A lot of Boeing engineers were also pilots. They loved airplanes and flying and engineering.

xNeil• 4 years ago

Hi Walter! You have (evidently) a tonne of experience in the aviation industry. Is there anything you noticed the 'engineer's engineers' had in common? What made them such great engineers.

I was looking to a career in Aerospace Engineering - but it's an interest. I'm still in college, but I'm not sure if it's what I want to do. Regardless - what do you think makes an engineer an engineer's engineer?

WalterBright8• 4 years ago

It's simple - they loved engineering. It was not just a job. It oozed from their core. They'd have done it for free. I've known many engineers who were in it for the money. While they could get the job done, their heart wasn't in it, and it showed. I'm sure you can pick them out in your organization.

Burt, who was in his 60s, was always excited to show me some new way of doing things, showing off his notebook, showing me his (then useless) slide rule, etc. He was also an endless source of engineering tales which he'd tell with relish. So was Erv, though Erv didn't work on the 747.

And they were happy to tell this stuff to me, because it was exactly what I wanted to be doing.

On the software side, I haven't met John Carmack, but I suspect that working with him would be a similar experience. Woz too, obviously.

xbar• 4 years ago

Thanks for your comment. More would be welcome.

pbnjeh2• 4 years ago

One afternoon in early fall of 2005 or 2006, I had a couple of hours to kill -- it might have been been before an evening flight out of SeaTac. I drifted down towards the water nearby, to come across Saltwater State Park. After checking out the shoreline, on the way back to my car I passed by an old fellow parked in an older red pickup facing the water. He had his window rolled down, and instead of just saying "howdy", I asked him whether he had a good local place he could recommend for seafood.

That turned into a half or maybe hour long conversation. Turns out he was an engineer with Boeing and was involved with stuff and knew the big shots circa WWII and/or a bit thereafter. This was early 2000's and he looked like he could be well into his 80's or even a well preserved 90-ish, so I had no trouble believing him. Plus, the details he knew, and it was a pleasant and interesting conversation, anyway.

I wish I could remember his name.

It was a fascinating conversation, and I knew just enough to be able to hold up my end in basically understanding and appreciating what he was saying. I think -- hope -- he enjoyed that.

(And I was humble and curious enough to ask lots of questions. And I guess I knew enough to make some counterpoints and do my part in furthering the conversation.)

I left with the impression that he was a dyed in the wool engineer and personality. Although, at this remove, I'm a bit vague on how much of the conversation was engineering and how much business, about which he also certainly had some opinions.

Anyway, I only provide the details because it was the better part of twenty years ago and I'm sure I'm not revealing his hang out spot too soon.

He did have two places to recommend, the much more convenient of which was Lorraine's. They were packed, but they fit me in for dinner at the bar and the wild salmon was excellent.

P.S. I'm almost certain it was called Lorraine's, but I'm not finding it now. A short distance away, right on the water -- in fact, sticking out into the water. Gorgeous sunset views -- both the 2005 and 2006 trips had great weather.

Sam. Sam was his first name. Maybe another hour or two will give me his last name, from memory.

WalterBright8• 4 years ago

Thanks for the story. Burt started with the B-47, so it was after the WWII stuff. Burt was in his 90s the last time I talked to him.

pbnjeh2• 4 years ago

P.P.S. I can't edit my parent comment anymore, so replying to self.

The restaurant was Salty's. I wasn't zoomed in enough to get the name to pop.

Lorraine's is the steak house in Omaha that both my great aunt and Warren Buffett liked.

That's what comes of not thinking about something for a decade or two...

By the way, Walter, I agree with the others here; I always enjoy your comments and the insight they provide. This one just triggered a memory in me, of a character who reinforced my impression -- at some remove, on my part -- of the old Boeing.

Plus, if Salty's has held up, it's worth a visit.

bambax• 4 years ago

One of the most beautiful objects ever built. I went to NYC from Paris for the first time in 1990, on a 747, and a few days later stayed at the airport a whole afternoon, just watching 747s land. It was splendid, I think I could have spent a lot more time there.

ho_schi2• 4 years ago

    Boeing’s final 747 rolled out of the company’s cavernous factory north of Seattle Tuesday night as airlines’ push for more fuel-efficient planes ends the more than half-century production run of the jumbo jet.

The B747-8 is pretty fuel-efficient. As is the A380.

The smaller two-engine jets have grown bigger and fly now further. Therefore the B747 and A380 operate mostly between the big hubs far away with many passengers, fitting the design profile. Deutsche Lufthansa and Korean Air operating happily with the B747-8i and the plane works reliable. Reliability: The B777X is delayed, the B787 suffers quality problems and "lost tools", paint goes off (both B787 and A350), the engine problems on the A320neo seem solved some time ago and then the MCAS on the B737-Max is another sad story.

Lufthansa solved it delivery issues with the B787 by buying used ones. And the B747 just looks like a Queen, graceful and elegant :)

    The end of 747 production was “inevitable but it would be a little more palatable if they were making something new,” said Richard Aboulafia, managing director at consulting firm AeroDynamic Advisory.

Let us hope so. At some point aging existing feels need replacement and transportation between big hubs remains important. My recommendation about the 747, watch the freight loading before boarding. It is incredible how much freight (I don't mean baggage) fits into this plane while traveling across the Atlantic and transporting 450 passengers at the same time.

Kye• 4 years ago

I haven't kept up, but my understanding was flights keep shrinking. Planes were flying near-empty, or even completely empty to maintain hangar contracts on either end. Making them bigger also increases the minimum fuel needed. Smaller planes can be used to respond to changes in demand and popularity of destinations in a way huge planes can't.

xenadu02• 4 years ago

The "hub" model is disappearing; customers travel to the supposed hub via other methods (car, train) or they take direct flights. The super jumbo planes like the 747 rely on hubs for passenger density so it shouldn't be any surprise that most airlines aren't interested.

Having more smaller planes lets you do more direct flights and gives you way more flexibility should you need to change destinations, lease an empty plane to someone else, etc. It also costs you less in fuel when you need to fly it with few or no passengers.

Of course getting _any_ new plane means a years-long backlog right now so the newest trend is to acquire a regional or small airline and dismantle it purely to get the airplanes. Virgin America (by Alaska) and Spirit (by JetBlue) were victims of that strategy and won't be the last.

college_physics• 4 years ago

Watching a 747 land or takeoff is always giving me goosebumps. Somehow we have normalized too many things too fast.

jayess• 4 years ago

I'm sad I never got to fly on one.

gus_massa• 4 years ago

This will be the last one produced, but there a plenty of companies still using 747. I can't find a good source, but it look like their lifespan is 20 years or more, so you will be able to fly in one of them if you have enough money and time and do some research. Take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Boeing_747_operators

cartermatic• 4 years ago

Flying upper deck on a 747 is a dream of mine (even if business class on other planes is nicer nowadays)

mrclark411• 4 years ago

Long live the Queen!

jcadam2• 4 years ago

I flew on a 747 only once, a Lufthansa flight from Frankfurt to Denver back in 2006 (returning to the US after being stationed in Germany for 3 years). Absolutely huge.

I only fly domestically nowadays. Rarely do I end up on anything bigger than a 737.

encoderer2• 4 years ago

There was no better way to fly than the business-class upstairs cabin in a 747. Quiet, intimate, fast to plane and deplane.

WeylandYutani• 4 years ago

Aside from the engineering this plane came out at exactly the right time.

What made 747 special was enabling cheap flights for mass tourism. Four hundred passengers to Acapulco and Benidorm.

Boeing’s last 747 is rolling out of the factory

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