The Boeing 747 begins its final descent

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/2026/07/boeing-747-retirement/687304/

by dbl000 • 27 days ago

215 361 27 days ago

anovikov• 27 days ago

But really, it was just about four-engine planes becoming too expensive to run. Two-engine planes won. 777 burns 30% less fuel per passenger and has almost the same cabin width. And top level became a flop because it's too narrow for a first class cabin by today's standards and all other uses for them make no sense. Top floor existed at all because it was Boeing's entry for a heavy cargo plane competition in which C-5 Galaxy won: it was meant to be a cargo plane with a small - top floor - passenger cabin.

pfdietz2• 27 days ago

I think the top floor is there because the crew cabin has to be high so the nose can swing up. The cables and wiring from the cabin can't be easily disconnected to allow such access. You will notice other large cargo variants of airliners load cargo only through the side of the fuselage.

cucumber3732842• 24 days ago

Yes and no. The C5 has an upper level too. The whole setup solves a lot of problems at once. Opening nose makes for faster cargo operations which the military cares about for a bunch of reasons. There are usually people associated with military cargo so might as well seat them up there.

bobthepanda3• 24 days ago

This is correct.

For context, when the 747 was being developed, simultaneously Boeing was developing the SST, Britain and France were developing Concorde, and the Soviets had their own supersonic Tupolevs in development. Boeing was anticipating that supersonic aircraft would render the subsonic 747 obsolete for passengers overnight, so it was designed to be easily convertible to freight.

SoftTalker3• 24 days ago

I'd guess they'll continue in cargo service for many more years, just as the DC10 and MD11 did (despite the grounding after the Louisville crash, I expect they will fly again before finally being retired).

topspin• 24 days ago

Yes. There are recently built 747-8's that will in service for a couple more decades.

loeg• 24 days ago

Fedex continues to fly the MD11; UPS retired their fleet.

addaon2• 24 days ago

Top floor existed at all because it was Boeing's entry for a heavy cargo plane competition

Yes, but it turns out the hump is great for area ruling (aerodynamic drag reduction at transonic speeds), as observed by the 747-300's extended hump giving lower drag (but higher weight, of course) than the short-hump versions.

fransje265• 24 days ago

Slightly pedantic, but this is not completely correct.

It had a lower Cd with the extended hump, but it still had a higher drag, due to the larger wetted area.

philipwhiuk• 24 days ago

Engines became reliable enough for regulators to allow two engine planes to cross large bodies of water. (ETOPS) That's what really killed 4 engine planes.

WalterBright18• 24 days ago

Twin engines are actually safer than four.

WalterBright18• 24 days ago

it was just about four-engine planes becoming too expensive to run

Four engines are also less safe than twin engines. I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but Boeing did the math and made the case.

anonymars3• 24 days ago

Can you link to the source?

JKCalhoun• 24 days ago

My understanding is that the 747 has the highest safety record of any commercial plane. Is that not true?

dotancohen11• 23 days ago

Isn't that because the twins are designed to a higher standard, due to regulations such as ETOPS? It's not something inherent in two vs four engine designs?

I remember when the US Navy was rejecting single engine aircraft, and the F135 had be be proven literally bulletproof before they would even look at the F-35.

robotnikman2• 24 days ago

Guess I probably wont get a chance to fly on one, flying on the 747 was on my bucket list.

exmadscientist• 24 days ago

Somehow I only managed to end up on one of these gorgeous birds once. In seat 64K, NRT-DTW (or was it NRT-MSP?). The main cabin is... nothing to write home about. I was in no hurry to book another 744 leg. Upper deck, perhaps a different story.

Great seat number though.

SoftTalker3• 24 days ago

Yeah economy class on a 747 sucks as much as it does on any other airliner.

technothrasher• 24 days ago

Upper deck, perhaps a different story.

I only ever flew on the upper deck in coach configuration, and the last time I did that was about twenty five years ago on SAA. It wasn't anything special, but it was a little quieter.

philjohn• 24 days ago

I've flown upper deck on a 747 in Business (BA Club World).

It felt like a private jet up there, very cool. And that's even with the awful club world seats where you had to step over your neighbour to get to the aisle.

giobox• 24 days ago

They are beautiful things, but the last few I rode on with BA were absolutely starting to show their age inside prior to BA retiring them in 2020. I think the last passenger models were produced in 2011 and most of BA's 747 fleet was from the mid-90s. The experience was probably better on other carriers towards the end.

toast0• 24 days ago

If it's something you want to do, this is your call to action. (There have been several already)

There's still a few of these in passenger service, so you can easily get it done if it's important to you.

Otherwise, you'll need to figure out how to get on a cargo flight.

vimalbhalodia• 24 days ago

Lufthansa still has a number of 747-8 and 747-400 in active operation - while there's evidence that the routes are scaling back, there's at least a few more years to fly one. They're even refurbishing the interiors to have a more competitive long-haul business class offering.

Korean Airlines has a handful of 747-8 in active operation but they're making moves to retire them especially post Asiana merger.

Air China also operates a handful of 747-8 and 747-400 on both international and domestic routes.

FlightsFrom is a great resource to find routes for specific aircraft: https://www.flightsfrom.com/explorer/FRA?aircrafts=747 https://www.flightsfrom.com/explorer/ICN?aircrafts=747

robotnikman2• 24 days ago

Oh nice, that makes finding a flight on a 747 so much easier! Sounds like I have an excuse to visit Germany next year.

sleepyhead• 24 days ago

I flew 747 last month with Lufthansa and asked one of the crew how long they will keep it in operation. «I retire in two years so I don’t care» a very German response but at least they hadn’t made any announcement that he seem to be aware of.

Always fun to be on the second floor despite the seat configuration being a bit dated.

sersi• 24 days ago

Lufthansa first class on the 747 is definitely something to try once.

dboreham• 24 days ago

Flying on one in August, upper deck, courtesy of a lowball points redemption through United.

MattRogish• 24 days ago

Back in the olden days (2015-ish?) KLM was having a really, really cheap business fare sale JFK-AMS; I snagged it with Delta miles (if I recall correctly) - and flew there and back in their 747 in the upper deck (just to take the flight; didn't have anything to do in AMS). It was really quite nice; it was the first and apparently last time I've taken the 744. I'm really glad I was able to do it.

wolvoleo7• 24 days ago

Lol imagine sitting through 8 hours of agony for no reason. Do you actually enjoy flying? I'm sure I would find it agony even if I had the Emirates suite with the bedroom and shower (which is still more cramped than a 50 euro hotel room)

I would at least explore the city for a few days to have a break.

The only flying I enjoy is when I'm the one in the front left hand seat holding the yoke :)

GMoromisato15• 24 days ago

If this is truly on your bucket list, you should be able to pull it off.

I just asked my favorite stochastic parrot to find the cheapest flight from SFO on a 747 to anywhere. It found a one-way flight on Lufthansa for $500. If you can, I'd encourage you to spring for a business class flight on the top deck (probably $4000 one-way).

alistairSH3• 24 days ago

I got what was probably my last 747 trip a few years ago on a BA flight from DC to Heathrow.

But I probably missed my chance for an A380. Maybe a Lufthansa flight will pop up that’s affordable. The other airlines mostly operate in the ME or Asia, and no plans for either right now.

thesumofall• 24 days ago

It’s such a beautiful plane. Despite having worked for Airbus, the 747 triggers emotions for me that the A380 simply doesn’t. It represents an era of aerospace engineering that will not come back (in many cases probably for the better - but still!)

microtonal2• 24 days ago

As an aside, if anyone is going to Southern Germany, it's worth going to Technik Museum Speyer, where you can really go into the guts of the 747. They also have a Russian Buran space shuttle.

The next day you could go to Technik Museum Sinnsheim, which is about half an hour from Speyer, and has both a Concorde and a Tupolev Tu-144 (both of which you can go inside).

All truly marvels of engineering.

selimthegrim• 24 days ago

Don’t forget to top it off with a visit to the Hermann Oberth Museum near Nuremberg.

rambambram• 24 days ago

Very interesting! Looks like nice museums to go to. When I DuckDuckGo these museums, they seem to be related somehow!? https://www.technik-museum.de/

I recently visited Stuttgart to go to the Mercedes Benz Museum. They too have a lot of technical stuff of course, and history. Really recommend it!

joezydeco• 24 days ago

I've been to this museum, it's absolutely incredible. It's their version of the Henry Ford museum in Detroit.

The thing you neglect to mention is that the Speyer 747 is suspended 30 meters above the ground. It's breathtaking.

https://simpleflying.com/technik-museum-speyer-lufthansa-boe...

eastbound• 24 days ago

It’s beautiful because Boeing started, not with the smallest, but with the largest plane possible. Meanwhile Airbus started with Concorde, a completely orthogonal project to round up everyone’s identical patriotism, and both projects were absolutely beautiful in their own way!

dingaling• 24 days ago

Meanwhile Airbus started with Concorde

Oh gracious no, Airbus started with the utilitarian A300 widebody twin[1].

Concorde was Sud Aviation and BAC joint venture, nothing to do with Airbus which didn't even exist at that time.

[1]The original A300A might have been interesting, having a fuselage as wide as the much later 777, but Airbus got cold feet and scaled it down to the dull and worthy A300B. Every Airbus widebody until the A380 was constrained by that decision.

agumonkey• 24 days ago

I'm just a layman, but somehow Airbus doesn't embody the airplane magic.. yet I'm very curious what this means to you. Any easy to grasp details you could describe ?

WillAdams• 24 days ago

It was the last aircraft designed using a slide rule and conventional drafting --- the conventional wisdom is that if one printed up a compleat set of blueprints and loaded it on the plane it would be too heavy to take off, though of course, the anticipation was that it would soon be replaced by supersonic passenger aircraft, so it was designed to be easily converted to cargo.

Amazing aircraft, well-deserving of the "Queen of the Skies" moniker, I can still vividly remember going up to the upper deck and cockpit and the view out of the front/side windows.

WalterBright18• 24 days ago

My lead engineer at Boeing, Burt Berlin, showed me his (paper) design notebook for the 747. All done with a slide rule. He was an engineer's engineer, and a super nice guy.

perilunar2• 24 days ago

There's an old quip about aircraft design that "a plane isn’t ready to fly until the documentation is heavier than the airplane". Can't find a source for it though.

chadgiq• 24 days ago

Flew one from Chicago to Tokyo quite a few years back, what a great flight that was!

pseingatl• 24 days ago

Was it on Flying Tiger? I worked on cargo 747's for them in another lifetime; they had a daily Chicago-Tokyo 747 cargo flight.

d_silin2• 24 days ago

1969 was truly the pinnacle of US aerospace industry - Concord, Boeing 747 and Apollo 11 all happened during this year.

ceejayoz• 24 days ago

The Concorde wasn't made in the US. It was a UK/France partnership.

d_silin2• 24 days ago

My bad! Global aerospace industry then.

schainks2• 24 days ago

The US was still very much involved in its development and testing, so I think we can still chalk it up as a win for multi-country collaboration, eh :3

AnimalMuppet3• 24 days ago

Concorde wasn't the US aerospace industry.

mrcwinn• 24 days ago

This is such an absurd statement. What US aerospace has created post 1969 is nothing short of remarkable in comparison. (And we can be proud of the Apollo era too.)

A_D_E_P_T• 24 days ago

This is such an absurd statement.

Oh come on, it's hardly "absurd."

What US aerospace has created post 1969 is nothing short of remarkable in comparison. (And we can be proud of the Apollo era too.)

What are you referring to?

If you want to chart progress over time, consider this: In 1919, people were still flying biplanes and civilian aviation barely existed. Fifty years later, in 1969, you've got the 747 -- consider the progress made over those fifty years! Fifty years from then, in 2019, you've still got the 747 -- alongside, as the article notes, smaller and less remarkable aircraft "that are more efficient, but far less majestic and memorable."

So what, pray tell, is so remarkable?

rayiner3• 24 days ago

Today’s airliners cruise slower than a 747.

NetMageSCW• 24 days ago

Paywalled.

ck2• 24 days ago

we'll always have QatarForceOne (747-8)

well as long as Congress doesn't let him keep it, hopefully

BILLION dollars stolen from nuclear missile maintenance program to refurbish it

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_VC-25B_Bridge

exe342• 24 days ago

It was a private bribe, he's not giving it back. He's probably not even leaving the White House in 2 years either.

rbanffy9• 24 days ago

Not on his own will at least.

elzbardico2• 24 days ago

At least he is not going to live forever. He seems really fucked up lately.

dylan6043• 24 days ago

The funniest thing is that he's not going to continue using it after office. They plan to hang it in that hotel being called a library when it gets built

moojacob• 24 days ago

Didn’t read the full article but it starts with

The jet was perhaps the pinnacle of American engineering excellence. Its retirement signals an end to an era of American culture—and ambition.

End of American ambition? SpaceX landing is rockets… today! That’s apples to apples also, both aerospace. In other fields we have literally taught computers how to talk.

Leonard_of_Q• 24 days ago

The Atlantic writes for its owners as well as its readership, both of whom consider it unsavoury to compliment their homeland without adding multiple caveats.

jquery6• 24 days ago

Considering who the current face of the country is and how we are acting on the world stage, it’s the least they can do.

rayiner3• 24 days ago

America is currently leading the way in both commercial aerospace and AI simultaneously. This feels like a decade old article.

GMoromisato15• 24 days ago

Just off the top of my head, I can come up with a dozen American accomplishments that would have blown the minds of 747 engineers:

The Internet

Hubble Space Telescope

Google

Deep Blue beating Kasparov

iPhone

Human Genome Project

F-22/B-2/F-35 stealth tech

Falcon Heavy dual booster landings

Waymo

Starship live re-entry video via Starlink

ChatGPT

B-52 still flying

GMoromisato15• 24 days ago

I agree with you, and I would have expected Ian Bogost to take a more holistic view.

Talking about why, for example, Boeing never build a larger passenger airplane, or why the Concorde is no longer flying, would actually make for an interesting analysis of technology and business.

Why did the progression from the Wright brothers to the 747 not continue for the next fifty years? The answer has to do with physics and economics rather than lack of American ambition or excellence.

WalterBright18• 24 days ago

Boeing never build a larger passenger airplane

1. there wasn't demand for one - airliner designs are driven by the customers

2. the airport terminals would have to be rebuilt

3. the runways would have to be redone to support the weight

why the Concorde is no longer flying

It lost prodigious amounts of money on every flight. The Concorde was a prestige project, not a practical one.

Why did the progression from the Wright brothers to the 747 not continue for the next fifty years?

The 747 is far more technologically primitive than today's airliners. Take a good close look at the wing shape of the two, for starters.

projektfu• 24 days ago

You could say that engineering excellence at GE (and competition with RR and P&W) led to ETOPS which made it less attractive to simply build larger airplanes with 3+ engines. Why send one 747 per day when you can send multiple A330s or 767s, accommodating more schedules?

Rover2223• 24 days ago

Glad to see your sentiment. I’m so tired of the reflexive self flagellation of a lot of Americans. It’s often based in ignorance.

rootusrootus7• 24 days ago

It is very tiring. I get why Europeans might enjoy taking shots at us (though at one point I'd have said it was more of a good natured ribbing, given that Europe's history is also many Americans' history), and I fully understand the armies of bots spreading invective ... but the constant dogging on America by our own citizens is sad. I'm sure a lot of this outcome is intentional, but nobody fights back.

America is many things, has done many things. Some great, some not so much. Americans themselves should at least be honest about seeing the good parts even if nobody else will admit it. And if we're going to keep progressing forward we need people to be on board in good faith.

/soapbox rant over

llbbdd• 24 days ago

Agreed. A lot of my countrymen have forgotten that America generally kicks ass, it's sad to see.

sidewndr465• 24 days ago

I find the whole thing a little odd. The 747 seems to be a great aircraft. It's also a quad jet and the change in regulations for ETOPS makes twinjets a no brainer for reducing cost. There's no reason to hurry and up and get rid of them, many will continue in cargo service for many years. But there isn't any reason to build big quad jets any longer

nradov• 24 days ago

We might still reach a point in a few decades where capacity constraints at major airports make larger quadjets economically viable again. That was the thesis behind the Airbus A380, and it didn't work. But is it possible that they weren't so much wrong as just too early?

jquery6• 24 days ago

The most interesting thing about SpaceX is how it convinced a lot of otherwise sober people that data centers in space was a $50 septillion addressable market. You might laugh and think I’m joking but a lot of people seriously fell for the nonsense in the public filing, which should’ve been a one way ticket to SEC jail.

grosswait• 24 days ago

Let’s revisit this comment in 5 years. I’m not convinced HN critics know more about this than SpaceX does.

WalterBright18• 24 days ago

When the first transcontinental railroad was proposed and being built, it was beset with controversy and skepticism.

But when it opened, it exceeded the wildest expectations of its most optimistic boosters. It transformed the country overnight.

A similar thing happened with the first transatlantic cable.

microgpt14• 24 days ago

It's just money laundering. They hide transfers of wealth inside an IPO, buyback etc and tell ludicrous tales so they have a cover story that investors are investing because they believed the tales and not to move money.

shigawire3• 24 days ago

We've given up on the next generation of technology and choose to wallow in sweet hydrocarbons.

rdiddly2• 24 days ago

Shoot, I should've replied under this comment.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48714519

spankibalt5• 24 days ago

"[...] the 747 is the only commercial jet that deserves to be called beautiful."

Pathetic drivel. There's legion of commercial airliners that are more beautiful than the 747.

rbanffy9• 24 days ago

At least it’s not an up/down scaled 737… I’d say it looks nicer than the 777 replacing it, or the 380 that tried it.

spankibalt5• 24 days ago

Concorde, Tu-144, L-1011 TriStar, Il-62, Tu-154, SE 210 Caravelle, de Havilland DH.106 Comet and Vickers VC10 are all much sexier. Just for starters.

ayaros• 24 days ago

I realize this might be an unpopular opinion but I never liked the look of the "hump" created by the upper deck of the 747.

rbanffy9• 24 days ago

At least it’s distinctive. Most planes look like scaled versions of the 737 - similar shape, similar proportions…

Gagarin1917• 24 days ago

What?! It makes it look like a giant fighter jet

intexpress2• 24 days ago

I will miss the 747. Modern planes with less engines feel less safe. I hate all the justifications used to fly long distances across oceans with only 2 engines, or only 1 engine.

stouset4• 24 days ago

You mean the justification that they are, in fact, just as safe?

GMoromisato15• 24 days ago

I'm curious about this--wouldn't one expect more engines to be safer?

Unless having more engines increases the chance of certain kinds of accidents? Like maybe the chance of an engine failure damaging the hull goes up with more engines?

Not questioning the justification--I do believe it--I'm just curious about the details.

mjg593• 24 days ago

More people have died due to one engine falling off a 747 and knocking off the other engine on the same wing than have died due to dual engine failure on an ETOPS certified aircraft

GMoromisato15• 24 days ago

Anyone interested should read Joe Sutter's book, 747. Sutter was the lead engineer for the development of the 747 and he has some awesome stories.

One interesting story is that Juan Trippe (CEO of PanAm) wanted Boeing to create a double-decker airplane. He was enamored with the idea of "ocean liners" cruising the sky. But Sutter (and other engineers) knew that it would be impossible to create what he wanted, so instead they proposed a wide-body aircraft (10 seats across). Nevertheless, Trippe insisted on a double-decker design.

The engineers then created two cabin mockups. One for a double decker, which was basically two narrow-body cabins stacked on top of each other. The other was the wide-body of the 747. Once Trippe saw the trade off, he realized that the spacious cabin of the 747 was the way to go.

But even then, when he saw the second level where the pilots go, he insisted on putting passengers up there too.

I've had the good fortune to fly on the top deck of the 747. I highly recommend it.

hydrogen7800• 24 days ago

One thing I remember from his book is that the 747 was initially of secondary importance within Boeing, behind the SST. This wasn't Boeing's flagship, so to speak, until SST was canceled.

sidewndr465• 24 days ago

This seems like an odd version of the story. My understanding is Boeing designed lots of military aircraft, not all reached production. The 747 is the result of some of that design work.

Animats• 24 days ago

That was also said about the B-707, which was supposed to have some parts commonality with their KC-135 Stratotanker built for the USAF. But as development progressed, the airliner and the tanker diverged.

The B-747 went through a similar process. Boeing was proposing a big cargo aircraft to the USAF (the CX-HLS), but that was never built. Lockheed got the C-5 contract instead, which satisfied the USAF's need for a really big cargo plane. So the B-747 was built as a commercial plane, mostly to Pan Am's requirements.

Military-civilian commonality was mostly wishful thinking at the management levels, as it turned out.

fracus• 24 days ago

My memory of the 747 was that it was originally the military who paid for the design. They wanted an aircraft that could be loaded from the front. This led to the bubble at the front of the plane. For whatever reason, the military didn't bite so they repurposed it as a commercial aircraft.

wolvoleo7• 24 days ago

That makes sense because a high cockpit also combines well with nose loading which some military freighters have.

GMoromisato15• 24 days ago

You should read the book, if you're interested. From the book (p.84):

"Time and time again there appears in print the logical but false assumption that Boeing took its losing military C-5 bid and revamped it as the commercial 747. In fact, the 747 would be an entirely original design that owes nothing to the C-5."

That said, in the same chapter he talks about how GE developed a high-bypass turbofan engine for the C-5 and it was only because they had such an engine that the 747 became possible.

But really my only point is that you should read the book if you're interested.

zabzonk3• 24 days ago

I hated the top deck when flying east from NY to London. The rising sun poured in every time a crew member opened the cockpit door, waking me up. Best seat for me was the single one in the lower deck at the very nose of the aircraft.

The 747 was a great aircraft to fly in though. The tower of power effect on take-off really reassured you that you were going to get where you were going.

kkylin2• 24 days ago

We got front lower deck seats once when I was a kid. My sister and I had extra open floor space for playing. It was great.

hdgvhicv• 24 days ago

BA used to fly the on the Moscow to London route once a day. I remeber vividly the late night a320 flight was cancelled and we were stuck in the lounge until the early morning flight about 6 hours later.

Somewhere over the North Sea I decided to give the on board phone a go, and it worked. A early call to let my wife know I’d made it (there were only a few seats left on the morning flight and 180 passengers to fit on).

Next time I flew it the phones weren’t working, and it wasn’t long until they’d all been removed, so I’m glad I got to tick that off my list.

Likely my last 747 flight ever was far less salubrious. I was supposed to be flying Toronto to jfk to Heathrow, but the Toronto flight was cancelled and I got downgraded to economy and put on a 747 to Amsterdam.

pa7ch• 24 days ago

What do you mean by this tower of power effect? Was it just that the 747 had a more powerful take-off or something due to 4 engines?

kristianp• 24 days ago

The tower of power effect on take-off really reassured you that you were going to get where you were going.

I have the memory of being struck by how much the overhead storage compartments were shaking at takeoff. Not reassuring at all, but they stopped shaking once we got off the ground.

ghaff• 24 days ago

The upper deck was really intended as a first class lounge and I think I was up there once. But obviously wasn't very economical and got turned into business class seating once that came in.

nonfamous• 24 days ago

Qantas (I think, it’s possible it was BA) used the upper deck for economy and it was my favourite place to sit. The window seat had a little locker between your seat and the window (the curvature of the fuselage meant the seat couldn’t be right up against the window). It was a great place to keep all your stuff accessible without having to bother the aisle seat to get up to the overhead storage.

linzhangrun2• 24 days ago

Highly recommended, too. I was completely captivated by this when I was an elementary school student.

eichin3• 24 days ago

I had a round trip BOS↔LHR that was 747 eastbound, 777 westbound; I ended up on the upper deck of the 747, which was fascinating as an otherwise casual flyer. One especially memorable bit was landing - you're basically three stories up and suddenly the wheels are on the ground, and you're still three stories up :-)

(I'm still happy to have traded that for planes with a much higher cabin pressure-altitude - and would trade even further for business-class transatlantic non-cruise ships. But it was definitely fun to have had the experience.)

microgpt14• 24 days ago

A higher pressure-altitude or a higher pressure? Can't imagine what's good about a higher pressure-altitude. Less creaking making you less worried the plane will explode?

pwarner• 24 days ago

I sat under and in front of the pilots once. Also highly recommended.

GrifMD• 24 days ago

I'm kind of torn between the top deck and the nose seats.

I've flown British Airways's business class on the upper deck, and I've flown Qantas' business class which is all on the lower deck starting at the nose. I wasn't quite at the front, but I was close enough to see the slightly more forward facing windows. I always thought it'd be great to sit in that first row and have that more forward facing view.

I had a blast on BA's though, as I was young and blowing through a bunch of airline miles on a transatlantic flight with my now wife. Getting to sit backwards on a plane was a little fun change too. Those BA seats (their last generation business class) are pretty bad by business class standards, even at the time, but they were alright on the narrower upper deck of a 747.

It's a shame, as I don't think I'll likely ever fly in a 747 again. I rarely fly Korean Air or Lufthansa, and I've got no plans to fly Air China.

I will say though, I really didn't like flying the 747 in economy. I did with Qantas a couple times, and it was noticeably louder and less pleasant than their A380s which had started flying at the time.

So my recommendation: fly a 747 at the front or upper deck if you can in business or first, at least once if you've never had the chance. Avoid it if you're flying economy. Most other wide body jets will be newer, quieter, and all around more pleasant.

bobthepanda3• 24 days ago

I would have to imagine that the newer 747-8 would have the much lower pressurization and other comfort standards of its generation of aircraft in the 2000s; the problem is that it didn't really sell so most people did not get to fly in one.

bigfatkitten2• 24 days ago

I've had the good fortune to fly on the top deck of the 747. I highly recommend it.

I used to fly frequently between SYD-LAX in business class on Qantas B744s. 11K (top deck, right hand side exit row window seat) was one of the best seats in the house.

The only passengers who had it better were those downstairs in First, where the curvature of the nose pretty much let them see out the front of the aircraft through the “side” windows.

himata41134• 24 days ago

Those interiors look so much more pleasing than the ones we have right now even in business / premium economy class and I am not even that old!

aurareturn2• 24 days ago

Flying is much cheaper today. People want low prices over more comfort. They vote with their wallets.

himata41134• 24 days ago

I don't know, having more color doesn't seem that much more expensive? I guess the fabrics are expensive and stain relatively easily, but if public transport can keep them clean so can airlines IMO. Some fabric seats are over 3 decades old and they're still in a really good shape.

dylan6043• 24 days ago

To me, any 747 without a space shuttle on top of it looks naked

spking• 24 days ago

https://archive.is/PZO0r

lippihom• 22 days ago

Somehow archive.is has mostly stopped working for me on many mainstream sites (Bloomberg, NYT, WSJ, etc...).

massysett• 24 days ago

This article is but one example of a tiresome genre: the paean to the supposed glory days of aviation. Passengers dressed up, dined on caviar, and smoked cigarettes. Stewardesses were sexy, and liquor flowed in the expansive 747 lounge.

These pieces then bemoan today’s bus of the sky, with the unwashed masses donning sweatpants and dragging screaming toddlers who leave orange Goldfish crumbs in the seat cracks.

I am a beneficiary of the modern age of aviation. I don’t fly routes that would ever have been profitable for the 747, I don’t imbibe in the sky, I’ve never eaten the cheese varieties that the Pan Am stewardesses were trained to serve, and caviar just doesn’t interest me.

But I do ride narrow-body jets on nonstop routes that would never have seen 747 service, the experience is perfectly acceptable, and that’s my toddler chomping on the Goldfish. That narrow-body airplane is much cheaper to operate than a 747 ever was, which is fantastic because my toddler doesn’t have an expense account.

Some folks find a fuel-guzzling huge machine romantic. That would be fine if they wrote pieces about their love of big old planes. But instead they often start rambling about how this giant old plane was a pinnacle of engineering and of some grand social order. They forget what aviation truly was in those days and neglect the benefits of what it is now. One might think this is elitist or worse. But I shrug. I just find it tiresome.

stephen_g3• 24 days ago

For the money things have actually got better. If you pay the equivalent (adjusted for inflation or compared to wages) of what they were paying back then for an international flight, you're in first class and on a good airline that's hugely better than anything from the 'golden age'. Even business class is cheaper and (again on good airlines) is better than what people had then - the planes are quieter, the seats lie flat, the food is good, lounge access with free food and drinks before and on any stopovers...

It's kind of crazy that people compare the experience on a $1000 transalantic ticket and bemoan that the experience doesn't seem quite as good as something that was costing people the equivalent of 10-20x as much back then!

duskwuff• 24 days ago

Air travel has also become ~100x safer on a per-passenger basis:

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/aviation-fatalities-per-m...

fosk• 24 days ago

Function over form, or form over function? The endless debate.

Not necessarily disagreeing with you but I understand the merits in cherishing “form” in a world that is - for the most part - devoid of beauty and taste.

SR2Z3• 24 days ago

I think the context that's missing from this discussion is just how long the 747 was in service. When it was new, pilots didn't directly control the engines - a flight engineer did. There were no moving maps and navigation was done with radio beacons and pilotage (of course, this required lots of fiddling with knobs and a notepad). There were no flight envelope protections, and we knew next to nothing about the dangers of rocketing across the ocean at Mach 0.9. The first encounter between a jetliner and volcanic ash was a 747; despite all four engines flaming out and the whole plane being wreathed in St. Elmo's fire, the pilots were able to safely restart all of them and nobody got hurt. People who love this jet love it because they see the problems it solved and how it kept on rising to the occasion as the world changed around it.

I'm not going to pay 2x ticket prices to keep it alive either, but it is terribly romantic. If human beings are allowed to fall in love with machines this one is as good as any.

sandworm1012• 24 days ago

And the context of the different regulatory environment. Those fancy cabins in the 60s/70s were because prices/routes were controlled by government. Unable to compete on price, airlines competed on luxury. Which, at the time, largely boiled down to who which had the shortest miniskirts in the TV ads.

Today's flying cattlecar hell is the result of the opposite, a dramatic market-driven race to the bottom of quality... followed by a price bounce to see how much money they can pull out of use before we give up and drive.

The day we have self-driving cars good enough that we can sleep, domestic air travel is dead. Ill take 10 hours curlled up in the back seat of my car rather than the 10+ hours it takes getting to/from airports for a domestic flight.

Aloha• 24 days ago

We would all have been better off if Boeing had replaced the 737 with the 757 as intended. Its quieter, more comfortable, and a better aircraft all around.

tolciho• 24 days ago

The "big old plane" was from the B team at Boeing, everyone with money or ambition or plain common sense then had put their chips on supersonics, which guzzle even more fuel in addition to the Operation Bongo II problem.

NikolaNovak• 24 days ago

I agree with you on the social aspects 100%.

But still, I have a soft spot for the Golden ages of engineering well before my time - like many, I'm an apollo program geek. No matter how many documentaries I watch, books I read, websites I peruse, schematics I try to figure out, it is still beyond astonishing to me that we flew to the moon with 60s technology. I'll continue reading about it for rest of my life and be incorrectly melancholic about the simpler days of engineering :).

While the 747 isn't my kink, it'd adjexent enough thay I think I can understand it - I imagine it's similarly fascinating to think of massive intercontinental airplane designed by slide rule , then flown across Atlantic without computers or gps or ils or any other amenities.

More expensive and breakable and inefficient and polluting and just insane as it also may have been :)

Onavo• 24 days ago

They were limited by the tech of the time too. A modern clean sheet redesign of a 747/A380 class airplane would look very different given modern composites and improvements in engine bypass and compression ratio.

dlcarrier• 24 days ago

Here's one pilot's view of the glamorous days of the past: https://youtu.be/JjKSAp2ssY8?t=433

Poor safety was a big problem, too.

kelnos5• 24 days ago

This is a disappointingly cynical take. Sure, it's fine to criticize some of the specifics of this particular article, but the 747 was an engineering marvel for its time, and it was one of the major workhorses of commercial (and in some cases, non-commercial) aviation for a very long time.

We're allowed to be nostalgic for it. I, like you, benefit from the modern age. I never even flew on a plane until I was 19 years old, in 2001, so I never experienced those so-called "glory days". But I think it's important to think about and memorialize those times.

Smoking is bad. Objectifying stewardesses is bad. The whole "fancy party" type atmosphere of those days feels quaint and elitist now. The 747 itself isn't a great plane by today's standards, on several metrics.

But that's fine. We can appreciate it for what it was in its time, and celebrate an aircraft that put in so many hours and miles of service.

kccqzy• 24 days ago

I hear you, but I do think you are in the minority here. It is human nature to imagine themselves being fabulously wealthy and belonging to the 1% or the 0.1%, and therefore enjoying the privileges of this rarefied club. Such paeans to the glory days of aviation is the same as the glory days of railroading (traveling in your private rail car across country) and the same as the owning and enjoying a trip on your own yacht. Most people are fascinated by the act of fantasizing themselves being so filthy rich in a different era.

chrisss395• 24 days ago

I know less about the airframe differences across the -400 and -8, but I can say the 747-8 represented a major upgrade in Flight Management Software.

I re-wrote the Central Maintenance System (portion inside the FMS) in C from scratch because no one had the original detailed design documents. The original -400 code was written in Pascal if I'm remembering correctly. I gleamed what I could from the source and relied on unit tests to get the rest of the way there based on what I knew of the protocol itself.

The entire FMS software was completely re-written in C++ and using modern object oriented patterns (at the time). Probably the most fun I've had over my now 20'ish year career. Of course Boeing was pissed with the delays this caused because the airframe wasn't a major change. I'll quote a Boeing (from MD originally) executive as saying "Meeting this project deadline is more important than your child dying."

Sadly this was also the time I remember Boeing's engineering ranks began to thin out. Personal opinion, this was a large part of what led to the MAX situation.

wkipling• 24 days ago

Awesome. Was this part of the NG FMS program? I find it interesting how the 747 FMS is newer than the 777s yet due to type similarity retains legacy features.

scorpioxy• 24 days ago

That executive has lost any human decency and should be fired.

GuB-42• 24 days ago

Not just human decency. We all know that some CEOs will sacrifice your child for their goal. In fact, many people are ready to sacrifice other people children as long as they are distant enough, war wouldn't be a thing if we didn't.

But saying it out loud is another thing, it is, to me, a terrible blunder in terms of communication, and executives who talk like that should 100% get fired. They are the face of the company, what they say and how they say it matters. Maybe it matters even more than the technical part of their job. If they get a pass for saying things like that, that's even worse, because it means that it is what the shareholders and customers want to hear.

kelnos5• 24 days ago

I'll quote a Boeing (from MD originally) executive as saying "Meeting this project deadline is more important than your child dying."
Sadly this was also the time I remember Boeing's engineering ranks began to thin out.

These two things seem very related.

On a more positive note, awesome to hear an account of the software's evolution from someone who was there.

nehal3m2• 24 days ago

I hope you replied something like 'No, meeting this project deadline is more important than YOUR child dying, to me this is a paycheck.'

That's what I would've been thinking in the shower 2 days after the conversation, anyway.

microgpt14• 24 days ago

Plot twist: manager's child flew on a 737 MAX that crashed

tetris11• 24 days ago

I feel like people on HN who have comfortable passive incomes from stocks or other sources forget that people need a paycheck to sustain their lifestyles.

budsniffer952• 24 days ago

I'm shocked people here believe that this was actually said. Or maybe I'm not.

It's laughable, but Hackernews loves a good, "everyone in management is evil" story.

laszlojamf• 24 days ago

I'll quote a Boeing (from MD originally) executive as saying "Meeting this project deadline is more important than your child dying."

Given Boeings later history this is pretty chilling...

bigfatkitten2• 24 days ago

Boeing (from MD originally)

This class of manager is the cause of most of Boeing’s woes.

bluefirebrand• 24 days ago

This class of manager is the cause of most of society's woes imo

This sort of person, given any power, makes everyone's life worse

jeronimobomfim• 24 days ago

"no one had the original detailed design documents"

Is this normal for a comany like Boeing? It's not my area, but I would have guessed they would keep the documentation for everything on a product as important as a 747.

HeyLaughingBoy• 23 days ago

Not avionics, but I've spent most of my career in medical devices. A project's Design History File would indeed have the detailed design documentation of the system. The problem would be that word "detailed." The relevant standards state that the documentation should be sufficient for a normally-skilled engineer to recreate the (software) system, but how stringently that is applied can be very hand-wavy. And then there's the problem of drift where the software changes and the docs are updated, but perhaps not as precisely as they should be, and different people have different levels of documentation rigor. Well, you can see how it ends up 20 years later.

I'm actually dealing with exactly this problem on an old project right now :-(

pyuser583• 24 days ago

"Meeting this project deadline is more important than your child dying."

What was the context? Did someone’s child die?

jpollock• 24 days ago

I wouldn't think so. Most likely using a crass phrase to instill a feeling of urgency.

Probably didn't work. Remembered though.

MisterTea• 23 days ago

The original -400 code was written in Pascal if I'm remembering correctly.

Could it have been Ada 83?

uwagar• 24 days ago

to see sofas on a plane feels weird when they ask u wear seat belts all the time now due to risks from turbluence (clear air turbulence apparently!).

sgjohnson• 24 days ago

the 747 is the only commercial jet that deserves to be called beautiful

Concorde?

eichin3• 24 days ago

Concorde is exotic, absolutely, but having seen the one at Udvar-Hazy I'm not sure I'd call it beautiful... not being an aircraft designer, my sense for this is of course biased by the way the average commercial jet looks like, well, a commercial jet, and the Concorde looks like someone who was really good at paper airplanes got ahold of the CAD system for the weekend :-)

kevin_thibedeau• 24 days ago

They are just metal tubes with wings.

The 787 would beg to differ. It is an engineering achievement on par with the 747.

gib444• 24 days ago

Just a shame the airlines mostly opted for an interior that ignores obesity rates and the existence of shoulders

linzhangrun2• 24 days ago

One interesting thing is that the 747 was born as a temporary transition product, from a failed proposal after Boeing lost the competition against the C-5 Galaxy.

In the era when Joe Sutter designed it, almost the whole world believed that supersonic passenger aviation was right in front of us. Boeing put almost all of its core resources into the Mach 2 Boeing 2707. The Jumbo Jet was only a temporary plan based on a freighter foundation from the beginning. Its later conversion to cargo use was deeply considered from the start (which makes its situation today much better than the A380).

What happened later we all know. The Tu-144 fell from the sky over Paris. Concorde barely entered service because Britain and France did not want to pay cancellation penalties. Boeing was almost dragged down by the 2707. And the 747 became Boeing’s savior.

Ironically, as engine bypass ratios increased, newer airliners became more and more fuel-efficient, also slower and slower. This former "slow temporary backup freighter" is now the highest and fastest mainline airliner in the sky, able to fly above 40,000 feet and cruise close to Mach 1.

Another perhaps sad point is that before 9/11, the Jumbo Jet dominated the sky of large aircraft. So almost all the well-known bomb attacks people can easily remember were on 747.

idontwantthis• 24 days ago

Over the past two decades, airlines have stopped using it as a passenger plane and replaced it with smaller aircraft that are more efficient, but far less majestic and memorable. The 747 was once a symbol of American might, invention, progress, and populism. Now it embodies the decline of all of those values.

Can some explain why replacing it with more efficient, and still American, jets is somehow a negative for American might, progress, and invention?

rdiddly2• 24 days ago

"Its retirement signals an end to an era of American culture—and ambition."

What'd, fuckin' Putin ghost-write this?

The nostalgia is fine, but calling it "...perhaps the pinnacle of American engineering excellence," well, to paraphrase The Dude: "For you, maybe."[0] My engineering excellence kicks fucking ass, and I still have those values, and I'm an American.

Maybe those who aspire to engineering excellence should've gone to actual engineering school instead of majoring in literature.

[0] Perhaps you thought I was going to choose "That's just, like, your opinion man."

jdblair• 24 days ago

Lufthansa still flies a 747-8 between FRA and SFO.

https://www.flightaware.com/live/flight/DLH454

I booked it once when I couldn’t find a direct flight from AMS to SFO.

_jackdk_• 24 days ago

Qantas gave its final 747s a nice send-off too, back in July 2020, flying its final commercial 747 flight as QF7474.

https://www.qantas747.com/

They also had QF7474 trace the Qantas logo in its track along the way, which is so cool and I am surprised I couldn't find it in the official site:

https://www.escape.com.au/destinations/australia/how-qantas-...

rob74• 24 days ago

Combining the immensity of an ocean liner and the elegance of a swan, the 747 is the only commercial jet that deserves to be called beautiful.

If this article is going to be so poetic, I'm not sure I can continue reading it. Let's just stop for a moment and remember that the 747's, er, distinctive shape wasn't some designer's fancy, it was dictated by necessity: while it was being designed, Boeing feared that in the near future all (long-distance) passenger travel would be supersonic, so it wanted the 747 to also be attractive as a freighter, so they added the possibility of loading cargo from the front, so the cockpit had to be moved up. Simple as that. Of course, the supersonic revolution didn't happen, instead the 747 ushered in the era of widebody jets, and all the fond memories it created now make it look beautiful to the nostalgic. But in the end, Boeing's engineers were proven right: currently there are around 300 747s still in operation, but only 29 of them are passenger variants.

Ok, moving on...

Most 747 routes spanned oceans and continents, giving travelers a speedier option than the Queen Mary had across the Atlantic, or the California Zephyr across the West.

You've got your Boeing planes mixed up there buddy! That was the 707, not the 747. The Queen Mary was retired in 1967, and the 747 first flew in 1969, so there obviously was no timespan where the one was an alternative to the other.

Sweepi• 24 days ago

Also:

In the cabin, the heft makes the plane feel almost still, even at 500 miles an hour and 35,000 feet; it is the only plane I have ever flown in whose takeoff and landing were imperceptible to the senses.

"Only"? Not "First"? Ever flown an A380?

freetime2• 24 days ago

And "takeoff and landing were imperceptible to the senses" is quite an exaggeration for both the 747 and A380. They are nice to fly, but takeoff and landings are definitely perceptible. Unless the author was black-out drunk for both takeoff and landing.

nextstep• 24 days ago

America begins its final descent

chasd00• 24 days ago

The very first 747 is at the flight museum in Seattle. Pretty interesting to walk through it except there’s poweredge servers in the test equipment racks in the main fuselage. Pretty sure dell wasn’t even formed when that plane was in testing hah.

TomMasz• 24 days ago

I was able to fly business class in 747s to Japan back in the 90s (it was coach to Europe, though). That meant the upper deck and amenities like a sandwich and snack cart that you could just help yourself from. By the 2000s, it was coach everywhere, regardless of the plane.

The Boeing 747 begins its final descent

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