![]() airline to use the 747 for passenger flights, which ended in 2017, although some other international carriers continue to fly it, including the German airline Lufthansa. This was a straight shot - and reasonably priced.”ĭelta was the last U.S. “Before, you had to stop for fuel in Alaska or Hawaii and it cost a lot more. “Even people like me could go see Asia,” Aboulafia said. He recalled taking a Cathay Pacific 747 from Los Angeles to Hong Kong as a twentysomething backpacker in 1991. The factory wasn’t even completed when the first planes were finished.Īn updated model - the 747-400 series - arrived in the late 1980s and had much better timing, coinciding with the Asian economic boom of the early 1990s, Aboulafia said. It took more than 50,000 Boeing workers less than 16 months to churn out the first 747 - a Herculean effort that earned them the nickname “The Incredibles.” The jumbo jet’s production required the construction of a massive factory in Everett, north of Seattle - the world’s largest building by volume. The idea was to take advantage of the new engines developed for the transport - high-bypass turbofan engines, which burned less fuel by passing air around the engine core, enabling a farther flight range - and to use them for a newly imagined civilian aircraft. “Nobody wants a four-engine airliner anymore, but that doesn’t erase the tremendous contribution the aircraft made to the development of the industry or its remarkable legacy.”īoeing set out to build the 747 after losing a contract for a huge military transport, the C-5A. ![]() “If you love this business, you’ve been dreading this moment,” said longtime aviation analyst Richard Aboulafia. Thousands of workers joined Boeing and other industry executives from around the world - as well as actor and pilot John Travolta, who has flown 747s - Tuesday for a ceremony in the company’s massive factory north of Seattle, marking the delivery of the last one to cargo carrier Atlas Air.
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