Boeing 747: Flight’s End

NO AIRLINE HAS arguably been as iconic and looked as distinctive as the Boeing 747. The world’s first jumbo jet and the so-called ‘Queen of the Skies’, whose body is described as being wider than a boulevard and the tail taller than a six-storey building, was a marvel of aviation engineering and grace. Its size inspired awe, and it revolutionised air travel, allowing airplanes to carry twice as many passengers as most other aircraft.

But the airline business has changed since the first Boeing 747 took to the skies over half-a-century ago. And a few days ago, the last of these giants rolled off an assembly line.

The end had been coming for some time. Most major passenger airlines had retired the aircraft in recent years. And the hands of many were forced by the pandemic when air travel plummeted. Its imminent death was put off for a while with its use as a freighter. According to reports, Boeing had received orders for only 30 747s over the past five years, a majority of them to serve for cargo. (Even the last 747 is a freighter, built for the cargo airline Atlas Air.) But the end is now finally here.

While the first commercial flight of the 747 took place in 1970—a PanAm flight that flew between JFK airport in New York and London’s Heathrow—work on it is said to have begun about half-a-decade earlier. PanAm is believed to have wanted a jet two-and-a-half times the size of the recently introduced 707 so the cost of each seat could be driven down by 30 per cent.

The 747 transformed the aviation industry. With its increased capacity and lower costs, long-distance air travel was now more affordable. Its humped upper deck, often equipped with a lounge, became a symbol of luxury. It also allowed carriers to come up with the so-called hub-and-spoke model, where huge numbers of passengers could be squeezed into a jumbo aircraft to large airports like London or Dubai, before transferring them into smaller aircraft to reach their final destination.

The 747 itself went through many upgrades, from the first 747-100 to the 747-400, which could fly up to 8,354 miles non-stop, around 650 miles more than its predecessor 747-300, and could carry over 400 passengers. A record-breaking 1,087 passengers were once flown in one such aircraft in 1991 during a covert mission to airlift Ethiopian Jews to Israel. (Two of these passengers were babies born mid-flight.)

There were amusing stories, too. According to some reports, in the early days, there were concerns that airports may not be able to accommodate such large aircraft. And while those fears proved unfounded, many airports found the mobile steps they used so short that crews had to stack one set of steps atop another, to reach the doors of the 747.

It was the 747’s size that eventually proved to be its burden. Every time fuel prices shot through the roof or an economic downturn led to fewer people travelling, the gas-guzzling, four-engine 747 burnt through the airlines’ cash reserves. It has been clear for some time that soaring fuel costs and growing environmental scrutiny had numbered the 747’s days. The emergence of new types of relatively fuel-efficient aircraft like Airbus’ A350 and Boeing’s own 777, which carry almost as many passengers as the 747 with only two engines, brought with it the 747’s kiss of death. The old hub-and-spoke model, where large airplanes like the 747 played such a central role, is also going through a disruption. Most airline companies are moving to a business model that focuses on connecting more cities directly with smaller, more fuel-efficient planes, instead of funnelling passengers through a few large hubs.

Air India owned four of these aircraft until recently. The airline had introduced the 747 to its fleet as long back as 1971. And two of these were reported to be reserved for VVIP flights, carrying the prime minister, president, vice president, and other high-ranking officials to destinations, before newer aircraft for this purpose were purchased. At least three of the last remaining four aircraft were in operation until quite recently, before all were deregistered earlier this year in April. According to reports, the costs to refurbish would have made them unviable.

The time for this iconic airplane was up, even here.

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