Current and former employees, customers and invited guests participate in a ceremony to mark the delivery of the last Boeing 747 aircraft, at the Boeing Future of Flight Museum in Everett, Washington, on January 31, 2023.JASON REDMOND/AFP/Getty Images
The U.S. president flies in one. So does Saudi prince Al Waleed bin Talal. But these days, the Boeing 747 is more likely to carry parcels than people. For the double-decker that first flew passengers in 1970 and revolutionized air travel, the days are numbered.
The last jumbo jet to be built left Boeing’s factory in Everett, Wash., on Dec. 6, and was delivered to Atlas Air on Tuesday. The New York cargo and jet lessor has 59 of the 747s, making it an outlier in the aviation industry that has largely abandoned the aircraft as too big and costly to repair, and ill-suited to the shorter flights and multiple destinations that make up most airlines’ schedules.
The reign of the “Queen of the Skies” is over. As a passenger jet, its rule ended years ago. Air Canada last flew the 747 in 2004. United Airlines and Delta Air Lines stopped flying passengers on its 747s in 2017, becoming the last U.S. airlines to do so. Virgin Atlantic parked its 747s during the COVID-19 pandemic travel bust of 2020, as did British Airways.
“As a pilot who was lucky enough to fly the aircraft, the sheer scale of it was unforgettable, you literally looked down on other aircraft,” Al Bridger, British Airways’s director of flight operations, said at the time. “It changed aviation forever when it arrived in the skies … despite rightly moving to more sustainable ways of flying, we will still miss the 747 dearly.”
Of the 358 747s in the sky, just 44 carry passengers, while the rest are in cargo service, a segment that boomed during the pandemic. Lufthansa, Air China, Asiana Airlines and Korean Air are among the airlines still using the passenger plane. Others, including Atlas, fly the cargo version of the 747, which makes up 20 per cent of the world’s freighter fleet.
Final Boeing 747 delivery
The last Boeing 747, the original “Jumbo Jet” that revolutionized
air travel, has been delivered to charter carrier Atlas Air,
ending more than 50s years of production
Boeing
747-8
Wingspan:
68.4 m
Cruise speed:
Mach .86
Passengers: 410
Height:
19.4 m
Engines:
4 General
Electric
GEnx
Length: 76.3 m
Boeing 747 fleet
2023-2032
New orders
Returning to service
Retiring
1967-2022:
1,574 747s
built
Jan. 31, 2023:
Final plane
delivered to
Atlas Air
Dec. 6, 2022:
Last aircraft, 747-8F
freighter, rolls off
production line
17
10
1
2023
2024
2025
2026
2027
2028
2029
2030
2031
2032
9
9
9
9
12
12
14
14
15
15
17
17
22
22
24
24
25
25
Left in
service
after 10
years
747s in active
service: 448*
Retiring in
next decade
32
32
*As of Dec. 2022
the globe and mail, Source: graphic news; Reuters;
NPR; Aviation Week; Boeing; atlas air
Final Boeing 747 delivery
The last Boeing 747, the original “Jumbo Jet” that revolutionized
air travel, has been delivered to charter carrier Atlas Air,
ending more than 50 years of production
Boeing
747-8
Cruise speed:
Mach .86
Wingspan:
68.4 m
Passengers: 410
Height:
19.4 m
Engines:
4 General
Electric
GEnx
Length: 76.3 m
Boeing 747 fleet
2023-2032
New orders
Returning to service
Retiring
1967-2022:
1,574 747s
built
Jan. 31, 2023:
Final plane
delivered to
Atlas Air
Dec. 6, 2022:
Last aircraft, 747-8F
freighter, rolls off
production line
17
10
1
2023
2024
2025
2026
2027
2028
2029
2030
2031
2032
9
9
9
9
12
12
14
14
15
15
17
17
22
22
24
24
25
25
Left in
service
after 10
years
747s in active
service: 448*
Retiring in
next decade
32
32
*As of Dec. 2022
the globe and mail, Source: graphic news; Reuters;
NPR; Aviation Week; Boeing; atlas air
Final Boeing 747 delivery
The last Boeing 747, the original “Jumbo Jet” that revolutionized
air travel, has been delivered to charter carrier Atlas Air,
ending more than 50 years of production
Boeing
747-8
Passengers: 410
Cruise speed:
Mach .86
Wingspan:
68.4 m
Height:
19.4 m
Engines:
4 General
Electric GEnx
Length: 76.3 m
New
orders
Returning
to service
Retiring
Boeing 747 fleet
2023-2032
1967-2022:
1,574 747s
built
17
Dec. 6, 2022: Last
aircraft, 747-8F freighter,
rolls off production line
10
Jan. 31, 2023: Final plane
delivered to Atlas Air
1
2023
2024
2025
2026
2027
2028
2029
2030
2031
2032
9
9
9
9
12
12
14
14
15
15
17
17
22
22
24
24
Left in
service
after 10
years
25
25
747s in active
service: 448*
Retiring in
next decade
32
32
the globe and mail, Source: graphic news; Reuters; NPR;
Aviation Week; Boeing; atlas air
*As of Dec. 2022
The 747 transformed flying in the early 1970s, allowing airlines to offer hundreds of economy fares on a flight that made travel affordable for the middle class.
“This aircraft democratized flight,” said Mike Lombardi, Boeing’s corporate historian. “Because of its size, because of its range, because of its economy, everyday people around the world were able to buy a ticket.”
At the same time, airlines fitted the upper deck of their 747s with posh and roomy two-by-two seating, epitomizing the luxe travel experience.
The 747 will be forever associated with the glamour of air travel, with its imposing size, world-beating range and luxuries, which included an upper-deck bar in which well-dressed travellers mingled over cocktails and cigarettes while 33,000 feet above the Atlantic Ocean. Airports built gleaming new terminals to welcome the 747, driving a boom in air travel.
“Everyone in their Sunday best to go and fly – now everyone’s in pyjamas,” said Erin Gregory, curator of the Canadian Aviation and Space Museum. “The image that comes to my mind when I think of the 747 is very much rooted in that early aesthetic of the jet age, and that really is quite symbolic of that way of travelling and that time period and what that kind of travel meant for people.”
As Boeing’s 747 retires, a look at the jumbo jet’s 50-year reign
The 747 seats as many as 450 and stretches 71 metres – longer than a hockey rink – with a tail that reaches six-storeys high. A typical model weighs more than 412,000 kilograms on takeoff and contains 217 kilometres of wire.
Iron Maiden singer Bruce Dickinson, who piloted the 747 that carried his heavy-metal band on its 2016 tour, said the plane is beautiful and easy to land. “On the ground it’s stately, it’s imposing,” Mr. Dickinson told Reuters. “And in the air it’s surprisingly agile. For this massive airplane, you can really chuck it around if you have to.”
And that size is also its downfall. Airlines no longer need jumbo jets with four fuel-guzzling engines to serve their networks.
Boeing rival Airbus scrapped its money-losing Jumbo Jet A380 program in 2021, after 14 years, and has not made a cargo version.
Boeing delivered just five 747s in 2022, and has made 1,574 since production began in 1967. By comparison, the company delivered 387 of its troubled 737 last year, and has made more than 10,000 of the workhorses.
Narrow-body, twin-engine planes such as the Airbus A321 or Boeing 737 are better for serving smaller airports and customers who don’t want to land in larger hubs and then transfer. Boeing’s 787 is more fuel efficient than the 747, cheaper to maintain and carries up to 290 people. The long-awaited 777X will carry almost 400.
“It really comes down to economics,” said Chris Murray, a transportation analyst at ATB Financial in Toronto. “Some of the newer aircraft are much more fuel efficient and lower cost and still able to move the same number of passengers.”
John Grant, an analyst at British consultancy OAG, said flying on the 747 was “incredible, especially if you were lucky enough to grab a seat on the upper deck.”
“Sadly it is just like any car: the older it gets, the more you love it but you know there are better ones out there that are more efficient,” he said. “Its retirement was inevitable.”
Boeing handed over 747 No. 1574 to Atlas on Tuesday. On its fuselage, the last of the four-engine Boeings bears the name and likeness of Joe Sutter, the late Boeing engineer who managed the jet’s design team and is known as the father of the 747. His family was present for the ceremony, held in the same cavernous hangar that produced their forebear’s vision.
Phil Condit, Boeing’s chief executive officer from 1996 to 2003, said it was “incredible” that an aircraft’s production would last for almost half a century, and “would keep flying for many years ahead.” In a speech to the gathered former and current employees, he described being on the first flight test of the 747, in which one engine caught fire and was shut down before the landing and repair: “That’s what flight test is all about,” he said.
Earl Exum, vice-president of Pratt & Whitney, which has built the engines for about half of the 747s made, called the end of the plane’s production “bittersweet.”
“It was a feat of engineering and technology,” he said.
In a previous job many years ago, I worked as baggage handler at Toronto Pearson International Airport. Sundays in the summer were the days KLM flew in with its 747, a baby-blue and white behemoth that was always as clean as it was long. After the grimy, squat 727s and 737s I usually stuffed bags into, the KLM 747 was towering and a bit special, even for someone with no love of aircraft.
After the plane swallowed an impossible number of suitcases and cargo pallets, it would depart for the skies over the Atlantic and then Europe. Sometimes I’d get to watch it take off, amazed anything of that size could leave Earth. It was at once a blazing hot rod and a bloated vessel. Every takeoff seemed improbable, an act of defiance against the forces faced by all aircraft, though few more notable than the Queen of the Skies.
Eric Atkins