This is the Boeing 747, the world's first wide-body jetliner,
so wide that the Wright Brothers' historic flight was shorter than its wingspan.
The Quantum Leap in technology of this airliner was just extraordinary.
The 747 was much more than just a big aircraft, this airliner allowed every person on earth,
the opportunity to get an airplane and fly anywhere else. it was a billion-dollar gamble
that stretched technology to the limits, pushing the Boeing Company close to a financial meltdown.
Boeing gambled millions of dollars on this project, the design and development were daunting,
but when it finally flew, it sold off into the history books, it became an icon,
the most recognized aircraft in the world. The 747 created a revolution, and change the world.
The story behind the queen of the sky started on a quiet fishing trip in Alaska, with two giants
of the aviation world: Juan Tripp, the powerful owner of pan-am, and William Allen the boss of
Boeing. Tripp told Allen his vision for a super plane, he wanted an aircraft three times larger
than anything that had ever existed. Both men were reaching retirement, and
they wanted to go out with a bang, Tripp signed for 25 of the super jets to be called the 747,
which was the largest commercial aircraft order in history at that time, a deal worth a staggering
$3.7 billion in today's money, and Allen told Juan he could have them in just 28 months.
This set an almost impossible challenge for Boeing's engineers. This was all new technology,
this airplane was going to be twice the size of any commercial airplane in existence, nobody had
any idea of what it should look like. So, the first stage was to draw preliminary designs.
Heading the new 747 division was a young engineer, Joe Sutter, and this was his first big break.
He was given 20 people to do preliminary studies and design a jumbo jetliner, with a
good range, and high-speed cruise. From the start, Sutter's team worked around the
clock. But despite the size of their challenge, the 747 was not Boeings number one priority. Most
of the company's resources and best talent are being diverted into another aircraft: The Boeing
2707 SST because Boeing believed that the future of commercial transport is supersonic. It didn’t
take time before reality caught up with SST’s, the folding wing design was too complicated, too heavy
and the engines were underpowered and thirsty. And it cost a fortune to design and develop.
When it comes to aviation, speed costs money, and more speed costs even a lot more and more money.
When the Arab oil embargo came along, the Federal government and Boeing reevaluated the project
and realized that a supersonic passenger transport wouldn’t be profitable, so they dropped it,
and all hands were moved to the 747 project. The Major reason Pam wanted the 747 was that,
at the time, no airliner with two engines was allowed to fly anywhere farther than 60 minutes
from a diversion airport. The belief was that if one engine failed, the other could only safely fly
the plane for about an hour. This rule severely limited what smaller planes could do on North
Atlantic routes like New York to London, or on Pacific Routes like Los Angeles to Hawaii.
Twin-engine planes could only fly in these areas, within 60 minutes of Greenland,
which is not efficient, the efficient route is to take off and fly straight across the Atlantic
Ocean. For Pacific Routes, no twin-engine airliner was allowed to fly them at all, because on a route
like Los Angeles to Hawaii, there is no airport 60 minutes away, so twinengine airplanes are
completely disqualified. The only option airlines had was to either fly a twin-engine plane on an
inefficient route or fly an inefficient three or four-engine plane. The Boeing 707 and Douglas DC8
were the workhorses of the day, but they weren’t huge enough for airlines to make their money per
seat cost due to their high fuel consumption, Pan Am wanted a jet two and half times the size
of the current tri and quad jets, so that they can reduce its seat cost by 30%.
Even with the blessing of the then-powerful Pan Am, Boeing faced
a daunting task in making the 747 a reality. At the time, it was also designing a supersonic
transport called the 2707 to compete with the AngloFrench Concorde. Building one completely new
airliner was risky enough, but designing two at the same time, one that would be the biggest ever
and another that would be the fastest ever -- was a bet on the company's survival.
At the time when commercial supersonic hopes were high, some even thought that the 2707 would
eventually relegate the 747 to hauling freight. Joe Sutter, a Boeing veteran who'd worked on all
of the company's previous commercial jets, became lead engineer, his team
faced a number of challenges, from finding a suitable engine that didn't exist at the time,
to keeping the aircraft's weight down. Even before they could start building the 747,
there was a critical hurdle: Boeing had no factory large enough to do the job. Construction on the
Everett site began later in 1966 and proceeded rapidly despite being an immense job on its own.
Time was so short that the company finished the factory even as it was building the
airplane's first mockup on the floor. After a development and construction period of
just 29 months, the first 747 rolled out of the factory on Sept. 30, 1968. Four months later it
completed its first flight. The first passenger service was with Pan Am in the early 70s,
it was a big day as passengers Boarded the Jumbo Jet on the New York and London route.
Its introduction initially caused problems for airports: baggage systems were overwhelmed,
taxiways were too narrow, and some ground equipment couldn't reach the passenger doors,
it took time for airports to adapt. The 747 was designed with emphasis placed on carrying a lot
of passengers at once through major hubs and being able to fly Trans-Atlantic and Pacific
routes efficiently. And this emphasis is the real reason it fell out of favor today.
To explain better, Firstly, at that time, smaller more efficient planes weren’t allowed
to make transatlantic flights, and the quad and trijets of the time weren’t really efficient,
this means that airlines had to employ the hub and spoke model,
which involves a system of connections to destinations around a single hub,
generally cities that are the largest or most economically viable in their area.
With this model, airlines will require that you stop in their hub to connect between two cities,
creating the spokes of the system. Think of this model like a bicycle wheel.
A bicycle wheel has a central “hub”. Dozens of spokes poke out of this hub and travel
to the edge of the wheel. The hub of the wheel symbolizes an airline’s hub, while the spokes of
the wheel symbolize the many connections through that hub. If the wheel’s rim were to disappear,
you would have to travel through the hub to get from the end of one spoke to the end of another.
For example, think of Dublin Airport. Aer Lingus, the Irish National Flag Carrier,
has a hub in Dublin. If you wanted to fly from Bristol to Manchester in England with Aer Lingus,
you would have to stop in Dublin to board the plane that will take you to Manchester. But back
in the day, the 747 was designed for high-demand routes international routes in mind, so if you
want to fly from Atlanta to Paris, you will be flown to New York using a small plane, where you
will be put on the 747 to Paris. In this scenario, New York is the hub of the bicycle wheel,
and the connections of Atlanta-New York and New York-Paris are the spokes that run through it.
The reason airlines used the method is because it allows them to be efficient.
Imagine Dwayne’s Airways has six destinations in the United States: Boston, New York, and
Washington DC on the east coast, and Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Seattle on the west coast.
If we flew one flight between each destination, we would need to run sixteen flights. However,
if we have one hub on each coast, maybe San Francisco and New York, then we only need
to operate five flights. This means that we have to pay fewer landing and takeoff fees,
we’ll have lower crew costs, and we will be able to use five efficient, distance-specific aircraft.
Also, the hub-and-spoke model allows airlines to reduce seat-mile costs. Because, as route demand
increases, especially between two major hubs or international destinations, airlines can use
larger aircraft. This means that they can fly more passengers between two cities with fewer flights,
allowing them to reduce airport fees and pilot costs. Lower seat miles allow airlines to have
higher profit margins or lower their prices to better compete with other airlines.
The 747 is being phased out of passenger service by a shift in airline economics.
basically large 4 engine aircraft like the 747 have become dinosaurs
due to higher fuel consumption and the difficulty of filling them up.
Since turbine engines have become more reliable resulting in relaxation of ETOPS regulations over
recent years, to where more efficient and smaller capacity twin-engine aircraft can now operate on
the same long haul overseas routes that in the past were restricted to 3 and 4 engine aircraft,
the 747 effectively were priced out of the passenger operations market. Boeing has
actually sold more cargo models of the 747-8 than the passenger version. Besides burning more fuel,
these large aircraft were primarily suited to the high-capacity hub and spoke operations. With
it becoming increasingly difficult to obtaining landing slots and gates at the large mega hubs,
airlines have been turning to operate out of second-tier gateways with smaller efficient twins,
adopting a more “point to point” route structure.
The bottom line is that these giant aircraft could no longer compete against the newer more reliable
and economically efficient twins that could fly the same routes. Today, A 737 can literally reach
Europe from North America, without stopping to refuel, similarly, on pacific routes, the 737
can fly from Los Angeles to Hawaii, where three and four-engine airplanes shined in the past.
The last claim to excellence for the 747 in the passenger market, besides being a novelty, is the
super long endurance, but even that is challenged by the Boeing 777, with its superior range.
The FREIGHTER model is still in good demand, and likely will be for years to come. Unlike
for passengers, the hub and spoke model works exceptionally well for freight companies
and few freighter aircraft can rival the sheer carrying capacity of the 747. What do you think of
the 747? And if you have flown it before, please tell us your experience in the comment section.