Thread: Queen of the Skies Retires

The Final Boeing 747: Farewell, Queen of the Skies

The final delivery of the iconic jumbo jet marks the end of an era.

By Julie Johnsson (Bloombereg)

January 31, 2023 at 6:00 PM GMT+7

The first and final 747 jumbo jet models both started with a handshake deal.

Back in the mid 1960s, the leaders of Boeing Co. and PanAm came to an agreement that if the US planemaker pushed ahead with the audacious new design, the airline would in turn go ahead and buy the giant jetliner.

That gentleman’s agreement would kick-start one of the most successful programs in civil aviation, singlehandedly transforming the way the world flies and giving the Queen of the Skies, as the 747 came to be known, the undisputed reign over the world’s flight paths for decades to come.

No other airplane captured the public imagination quite like the hump-backed jumbo jet, nor illustrated the rewards that can flow from breathtaking risk of developing a new aircraft from the ground up. The 747 was an emblem of era when US innovation was defined by pushing technical boundaries with moonshot projects like the Saturn V rocket — another Boeing effort.

A team led by Boeing engineer Joe Sutter designed and built the jumbo in less than two-and-a-half years, an unimaginable feat by today’s standards. They trailblazed concepts that forever changed long-distance travel: from the 747’s twin-aisle layout to overhead bins and inflight entertainment. Early models redefined luxury travel with a spiral staircase to a swanky upper-deck lounge.

Joe Sutter (third from left) was the chief designer of the 747, turning the giant aircraft from first plan into reality in less than three years.
Source: Boeing Historical Archives

Now, following a 54-year run, Boeing has ended production of the 747. When the last of the jets flies away from its Seattle-area factory on Feb. 1, the curtain will fall on the four-engine era, after Airbus already gave up its ill-fated attempt at a rival jetliner. It axed the A380 double decker in 2019.

In total, Boeing built 1,574 of the 747 model, from passenger versions to freighters to special editions like a NASA-commissioned version that carried the Space Shuttle or the Air Force One for US presidents. Over the past decade, the giant aircraft was eclipsed by smaller, more nimble models like Boeing’s own 777 or Airbus SE’s A350 that only have two engines but still manage to fly the same routes, albeit at much lower operating costs.

The last iteration of the 747 also owed its existence to a handshake. This time, it happened at a dinner at Seattle’s upscale Fairmont Hotel in the mid-2000s where Deutsche Lufthansa AG executives were pressing their Boeing counterparts to upgrade the 747 with technology being created for its most advanced jet, the 787 Dreamliner. Listening with rapt attention: Joe Sutter, the legendary father of the 747, then well into his 80s and long retired but still a force to be reckoned with inside Boeing.

“He turned to his senior management leadership team and said, ‘Guys, just do it,’” recalled Nico Buchholz, at the time a Lufthansa executive who attended the gathering. “As history has shown, they did it and Lufthansa did buy it.”

And while the 747-8, as that line was dubbed, wasn’t a resounding sales success, freighter versions of that plane could still be flying as late as the 2050s, like the final model being delivered this week, to Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings Inc.

Aviation’s advancements, from the 747 to the Concorde to the Space Shuttle, had long been driven by the goal of going further, faster and higher. But over time, another consideration has come into play: cost.

Sutter remained a force to be reckoned with at Boeing long after he retired, regularly visiting his office at the company until the final months before he died at age 95 in 2016. Source: Boeing Historical Archives

Airbus’s debacle with the A380, arguably the last time a manufacturer penned a radical new design layout, only strengthened a new mantra of finessing and improving existing airframes rather than pushing the boundaries of what’s physically and economically possible. Boeing has said that it won’t come up with a new aircraft design this decade, underscoring a management ethos that puts efficiency before experiments.
No other aircraft encapsulates that approach quite like the A320 and 737 Max models, which are essentially more fuel-efficient versions of planes conceived decades ago and account for the vast majority of deliveries — and profit — and both planemakers.

That low-risk mindset notwithstanding, a new wave of innovation is beginning taking shape, driven by climate change and an urgent need to curb emissions. Boeing plans to build and test-fly with NASA a full-scale prototype of a narrowbody jet with extra-long, thin wings that could eventually succeed the 737, while Airbus pursues breakthroughs with fuels, like hydrogen. Upstarts like Joby Aviation Inc. and Archer Aviation Inc. are looking to replace ground transport with flying taxis.

“There will be significant improvements,” said Buchholz. Only this time, “it will start with small aircraft.”
The 747s voyage from design to final delivery, told in a series of photos:


Wiring the cockpit instruments of a Boeing 747 mockup circa 1967. The aircraft was far bigger and complex than anything Boeing had ever built before. Source: Boeing Historical Archives

The plant Boeing built to house the 747's assembly line in Everett, Washington, eventually became the largest enclosed structure in the world. Source: Boeing Historical Archives

Pilots fly the first commercial flight of the new Boeing 747 from New York to London in 1970. Early versions of the model had a three-person cockpit crew, with the two-person layout only standard on the -400 variant in the early 1990s.
Source: BBC Motion Gallery Editorial/BBC News/Getty Images


A full sized mock-up of Boeing's 747 aircraft complete with passengers in 1968. The 747 redefined the standards of luxury travel, from the upper deck to the spiral staircase to the sheer size of the cabin that allowed for in-flight entertainment and more spacious layouts.
Photographer: Alan Band/Keystone/Getty Images


The 747 was also reconfigured to meet special missions, from providing a piggyback ride to the Space Shuttle to ferrying the US president around the globe inside a tricked-out Air Force One.
Photographer: Space Frontiers/Archive Photos/Hulton Archive/Getty Images


Airbus tried to break Boeing’s hold on the jumbo market with the A380 double-decker, pictured here taking off with a 747 in the foreground. But the plane never managed to win enough orders, and the European manufacturer canceled the model in 2019.
Photographer: Tim Hales/Getty Images


With its iconic hump and huge body, the 747 has always been a crowd pleasers, making an impression upon takeoff and landing around the world. Photographer: Bob Carey/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images


The last US airline to operate the 747, Delta Air Lines, retired the last of its jumbo jets in early 2018. More of the four-engine jets were grounded around the globe when the coronavirus pandemic decimated long-range travel two years later.
Photographer: aviation-images.com/Universal Images Group Editorial/Getty Images


With its massive cabin space and long range, the jumbo could be deployed for other missions than just ferrying passengers around the world. Here a scientist works inside a converted 747 cabin used for NASA's airborne Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy. The aircraft featured a large door in the fuselage that could be opened in flight to reveal a telescope.
Photographer: Martin Bernetti/AFP/Getty Images


Some retired jumbos found a surprise second act in the leisure industry, like this model that was converted into cafe inside a decommissioned 747-400 on the outskirts of Bangkok…..
Photographer: Manan Vatsyayana/AFP/Getty Images


…or this house in Malibu, California, that uses wings and tail stabilizers from a 747 as roof profiles.
Photographer: Laura Doss/Carson Leh/Solent/Shutterstock


Qantas built its long-haul ambitions around the 747, connecting Australia to the rest of the world with the jumbo painted in a distinct kangaroo livery. Here, cabin crew and ground staff sign the underneath of the fuselage of a Boeing 747-400 in 2020 before it takes off at Sydney Airport for the last time before it retired from service.
Photographer: David Gray/Getty Images


Lufthansa was long a key customer for the 747, and the German airline was among the last to order the final iteration, called the 747-8. The type is easily recognized by its distinct chevron-shaped turbine housing.
Photographer: Boris Roessler/DPA/AFP/Getty Images, Stephen Brashear/Getty Images (2), Wolfgang Kumm/picture alliance/Getty Images


As production of the 747 ends, the 777x is Boeing’s new king of the skies. The successor to the popular 777 wide-body comes with new foldable wingtips to make navigation in narrow airport lanes easier. But the plane is year behinds schedule and still awaiting commercial entry into service.
Photographer: Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images


The future of civil aviation advancements may well lie in smaller aircraft, like the Transonic Truss-Braced Wing (TTBW) demonstrator airplane that Boeing is designing together with NASA. Source: Boeing


The final Boeing 747 plane, a freighter version designated for Atlas Air Worldwide, rolls out of the company's facility in Everett in December.
Photographer: David Ryder/Bloomberg