As the 1,574th (and final) commercial Boeing 747 is delivered STEPHEN BRIDGEWATER takes a nostalgic look at the ‘Queen of the Skies’ and provides his Top 10 rarities and Top 10 fanciful variants that never left the drawing board.
Boeing’s 747 has graced our skies since 9 February 1969 but t31 January 2023 marked the delivery of the last ever example. Wearing the split colours of both its owner Atlas Air and the German-based transport company Apex Logistics for which it will be operated, N863GT also carries a small graphic paying tribute to designer Joe Sutter – the man often referred to as “the father of the 747”.
It is somewhat fitting that this final ‘Jumbo Jet’ is a 747-8F dedicated freighter aircraft as Sutter created the original 747 very much with cargo operations in mind.
The final 747 to roll off the production line will be flown by Atlas Air. (Boeing)
The first 747 was the result of the work of some 50,000 Boeing employees. Called "the Incredibles," these were the team members who made aviation history by building the prototype 747 in less than 16 months.
Boeing had recently lost the USAF CX-Heavy Logistics System (CX-HLS) contract to produce what became the Lockheed C-5 Galaxy cargo aircraft when Juan Trippe, founder of loyal Boeing customer Pan Am, asked Boeing CEO Bill Allen to create a new jetliner that was larger than the 707s then in service.
It would have been logical to convert the plans drawn up for the CX-HLS programme into what Trippe needed but Sutter was adamant that the aircraft would be all new. The existing high-mounted wing was changed for a conventional low-wing configuration but Pan Am was keen to retain the CX-HLS’s cargo carrying capabilities. Trippe’s reasoning was simple –the hoped for imminent arrival of a new generation of supersonic airlines would soon make slower airliners redundant and the 747 would quickly be relegated to carrying freight.
The need to have an uninterrupted cargo bay meant positioning the cockpit above or below the main fuselage. Boeing opted to place it above in a 'hump', but not before exploring this configuration dubbed the 'anteater'. (Boeing)
The CX-HLS contract had called for an aircraft that could be loaded through the nose and Boeing’s design had achieved this by moving the cockpit above the nose in a pod. Some initial thought was given to moving the cockpit below the nose in the later 747 – resulting in a distinct ‘anteater’ profile, but ultimately the decision was made to stick with the distinctive upper deck. Sutter even drew up a version of the design with the top section extending the entire length of the fuselage, allowing two decks of seating, however this was dropped due to concerns over evacuation routes.
With the now familiar ‘hump’ ingrained in the design, Juan Trippe placed an order for 25 Boeing 747-100s in 1966 at a unit cost of $25m per aircraft. Of course, the much-anticipated era of supersonic airliners was never fully realised and the 747 would therefore go on to become a long-serving and much developed airframe, enabling mass air travel and ever cheaper airfares.
The 747's final design was offered in three configurations: all passenger, all cargo and a convertible passenger/freighter model. Over the coming decades the airframe was refined, improved upon, stretched and made every more efficient. Although it was expected to quickly fade from history the 747 outlived many of its naysayers and production passed the 1,000 mark in 1993. The much talked about slowdown in sales of passenger versions in favour of cargo variants only happened as the world entered the 21st century.
Over the decades the basic 747 airframe has also been modified for a number of ‘non-standard’ uses. We’ve chosen our Top 10 favourites to help mark the handover of the final airframe.
NASA's two SCAs were used to transport orbiters between locations. (NASA)
NASA flew two modified 747s (NASA 905 and 911) to ferry space shuttle orbiters from their landing sites back to the launch complex at the Kennedy Space Center. The orbiters were loaded atop the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA) by large gantry-like structures called Mate-Demate Devices that hoisted the shuttle off the ground for post-flight servicing and then mated them with 747 for their ferry flights.
The SCAs were converted from standard 747s with three struts with associated interior structural strengthening protruding from the top of the fuselage to retain the shuttle and two additional vertical stabilisers were mounted at the end of the standard horizontal tailplane to enhance directional stability. A flight crew escape system, consisting of an exit tunnel extending from the flight deck to a hatch in the bottom of the fuselage, was installed along with pyrotechnics to activate the hatch release and cabin window release mechanisms.
NASA 905, a Boeing 747-123 model built in 1970 and obtained by NASA from American Airlines in 1974 and was initially used for wake vortex studies before being modified by Boeing to SCA configuration in 1977. It was used for the Shuttle Approach and Landing Tests (ALT) including eight captive and five free flights with the orbiter prototype Enterprise and later flew 70 of the 87 ferry missions during the operational phase of the shuttle programme.
Upon its retirement in late 2012, it had flown 11,018 flight hours over 42 years and had made 6,335 landings.
NASA 911 was a Boeing 747-100SR-46 built in 1973 for Japan Air Lines. The aircraft was obtained by NASA in 1989 and upon its retirement had amassed 33,004 flight hours, including 386 flights as a NASA shuttle carrier aircraft, 66 of which were flights with a space shuttle mounted atop the fuselage.
It wasn’t just the Shuttle that flew atop the SCA though. In 2010, the Boeing Phantom Ray stealth UCAV was carried on a 50-minute test flight at Lambert International Airport in St Louis, Missouri. This was the first time in its 33 years of service that the SCA bore an aircraft other than the Space Shuttle.
SOFIA performed its final flight in 2022 and is now on display at the Pima Air & Space Museum. (NASA)
NASA also operated a highly modified 747SP airframe until late 2022 as the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA). The aircraft was modified to carry a 17 tonne 2.5m diameter reflecting telescope in the aft section of the fuselage and was designed to act as an infrared astronomy, observing the stars from high altitudes.
SOFIA had previously served Pan Am as Clipper Lindbergh and then served with United before being acquired by NASA in 1997. The aircraft operated 143 flights, mainly from Palmdale but also in Santiago in Chile and Christchurch in New Zealand.
Just one YAL-1 was built and tested. It carried a chemical oxygen iodine laser in the nose. (USAF)
Whereas part of SOFIA’s research was purely scientific the unique YAL-1 had a far more lethal role in mind.
Based on a 747-400F airframe, the YAL-1 was fitted with a megawatt-class chemical oxygen iodine laser (COIL) and envisaged as a missile defence system to destroy tactical ballistic missiles shortly after launch. The laser did not burn through the target, it heated the skin of the missile causing it to failure due to flight stressed.
However, in order to be effective, the YAL-1 would have needed to orbit comparatively close potential missile launch sites – making it very vulnerable to enemy aircraft and SAMs. Thought was given to using the laser to attack hostile aircraft and even low-Earth orbit satellites but as neither emitted the same heat signature as a missile they would have been difficult to detect.
The sole YAL-1 first flew in 2002 but it would be 2007 before a low-power laser was test-fired against an airborne target and another three years before it trialed a high-power laser and destroyed a test missile in flight. Although it was a success, funding for the programme was cut in 2010 and the YAL-1 programme cancelled in December 2011.
Three 747s were converted into Supertankers. None remain active but there is a push for one to return to duty in 2023. (Evergreen)
A spate of waterbomber accidents at the turn of the century made it obvious that the days of using converted piston-powered airliners to fight fires were numbered. Evergreen International Aviation devised a plan to convert a 747 into the world’s largest fire-bomber and successfully modified it to carry up to 19,600 US gallons (74,000 litres) of fire retardant or water.
Equipped with a pressurised liquid drop system, which Evergreen claimed could disperse retardant either under high pressure or at the speed of falling rain, the Supertanker typically flew at 500ft and 160mph while of laying down a swath of fire retardant 3 miles long and as wide as 150ft.
The first was based on a 747-200 and flew in 2006. Used for development work, it never entered service but a 747-100 was similarly converted and entered service in 2009 in time to fight fires in Cuenca in Spain and Oak Glen in California.
A third 747 Supertanker was developed by Global Supertanker Services and based on a 747-400. Tanker 944 (N744ST) entered service in September 2016 and fought wildfires in Bolivia, Chile and Israel as well as the USA before being retired in 2021.
Cosmic Girl began life as a Virgin Atlantic airliner but is now operated by Virgin Orbit as a launch platform. (Virgin Orbit)
The Supertanker is not the only 747 modified to drop things and Cosmic Girl recently hit the headlines when it conducted the first horizontal rocket launch from UK soil.
The former Virgin Atlantic 747-400 airliner has been modified by Virgin Galactic and Virgin Orbit to be used as a ‘mothership’ for its LauncherOne SmallSat launch rocket.
Cosmic Girl first flew in airliner format in September 2001 and was registered G-VWOW but was transferred to Virgin Galactic in 2015 and re-registered as N744VG. Engineering work to convert it into a drop-ship was minimal as the 747 was always designed with a fifth underwing pylon to accommodate a spare engine if required. The pylon is located between the fuselage and the left inboard engine. And allows LauncherOne to be dropped from Cosmic Girl at a height of 35,000ft before powering into orbit.
Perhaps the most ungainly of all flying 747 variants, the Dreamlifter is used to transport 787 Dreamliner parts between factories. (Boeing)
Cosmic Girl can carry a maximum payload for LauncherOne operations of just 880lbs whereas a standard 747-400F can carry more than 270,000lbs of cargo.
Although the Boeing Large Cargo Freighter (LCF) – commonly known as the Dreamlifter – carries a similar weight of payload its capacious bubble fuselage has a volume of 65,000 cubic feet, three times that of the -400F.
The outsized aircraft was designed to transport Boeing 787 Dreamliner components between Italy, Japan and the US to avoid delays associated with marine shipping. A hinged tail allowed easy loading from the rear and a bulbous cabin allowed Dreamliner fuselages to be carried with ease.
The first of four 747-400s to be converted into LCF configuration flew in 2006 and they all remain in service in 2023.
The current fleet of VC-25As is due to be replaced with a pair of converted 747-8i airframes later this decade. (Obama White House Archives)
Perhaps the most famous of all 747s are the two VC-25A aircraft operated by the USAF and commonly known as Air Force One.
Whereas most 747s routinely carry hundreds of passengers the VC-25A is configured for just 70 seats for Presidential aids, staff and the press. The President himself has an executive suite and a private office and the aircraft also contains its own medical centre and telecommunication office – the latter including 87 telephones and 19 televisions.
The VC-25As entered service in 1990, replacing the converted Boeing 707s then in service. They are expected to remain in service until around 2027 when they will be replaced by VC-25Bs based on the latest 747-8i variant.
The USAF's E-4 Nightwatch mission control aircraft is nicknamed the Doomsday 'Plane. (USAF) While Air Force One carries the President in times of peace another 747 variant is his mode of transport in times of emergency. The USAF operates a fleet of four E-4 Nightwatch in the Advanced Airborne Command Post role, providing a strategic command and control capability as part of the National Emergency Airborne Command Post (NEACP) programme.
Nicknamed the 'Doomsday ‘Plane’, the 747-200-based Nightwatch has a command work area, conference room, briefing room, an operations team work area, communications area and rest area and carries a crew of up to 112. Its role is to carry and provide direct support to the President, the Secretary of Defense, and the JCS in the event of a war and it is capable of staying aloft for a week at a time.
The jet is protected against the effects of electromagnetic pulse (EMP) and uses traditional analogue flight instruments instead of more modern electronic avionics to help survivability. It also houses advanced satellite communications and has nuclear and thermal shielding as well as acoustic control and an upgraded air-conditioning system for cooling electrical components.
Flown by the 1st Airborne Command and Control Squadron of the 595th Command and Control Group located at Offutt AFB near Omaha, Nebraska, at least one Nightwatch remains on 24/7 alert at all time.
Pratt & Whitney chose to mount its developmental engines on a fuselage-mounted winglet whereas other engine manufacturers have hung powerplants below the wing for testing. (Pratt & Whitney Caada)
Although the 747 was designed with the ability to carry a spare fifth engine on a pylon if necessary, this was an inactive powerplant that was simply ‘along for the ride’ while being ferried down route.
However, during the course of the 747s lifetime the aircraft has flown with five ‘live’ engines on several occasions. In recent years, as aviation works towards reducing its carbon footprint, engine manufacturers have increasingly turned to the ubiquitous ‘Jumbo’ to act as testbeds for the latest generation of powerplants.
General Electric’s 747-400 N747GF joined the company in 2010 and has been used to test engines such as the GE9X turbofan designed for the Boeing 777X. Meanwhile, Rolls-Royce has operated former Cathay Pacific 747-200 N787RR since 2005 and utilised it to evaluate powerplants such as the Trent 1000.
Whereas GE and Rolls simply replace one of the 747s conventional engines with the prototype powerplant they wish to test, Pratt & Whitney Canada does things slightly differently. It operates two 747SPs (C-GTFF and C-GPAW) from Canada's Montréal-Mirabel airport and mounts the test engine on the side of the fuselage.
General Electric also operated a Boeing 747-100 in the testbed role until 2018, using a fifty-year-old aeroplane to develop the technology needed to make future airliners cleaner, greener and more efficient.
Just 19 of the 747-400D variants were built. (Kentaro Iemoto / WikiCommons)
While the majority of 747 operators were interested in how far their aircraft could fly the Japanese market was somewhat different. The regions topography resulted in great demand for short-haul flights and Boeing created the 747-400D (Domestic) especially to meet this requirement.
Built as a high-density seating model optimised for short-haul domestic sectors the -400D could seat 660 passengers in a single-class configuration. In order to lower the stresses on the airframe caused by multiple take-offs and landings the variant dispensed with the wingtip extensions and winglets included on conventional -400s.
Just 19 were built between 1991 and 1995 but there are reports that Japan Air Lines wanted to take the concept even further, dispensing with gallies, lavatories and even the retractable undercarriage to reduce weight and increase capacity. Thought was reportedly given to fitting aerodynamic spats to the fixed landing gear but unfortunately no drawings of this highly unusual derivative have yet to come to light.
The fixed-gear 747 was just one of a great many other proposed 747 versions never left the drawing board. Here are our Top 10 ‘what could have been’ moments:
The AAC would have been a flying mothership for up to ten 'microfighters' (Greg Goebel / WikiCommons)
Among the weirdest proposed uses for the airframe – and the personal favourite of Boeing's official historian Mike Lombardi – was the Boeing 747 AAC (Airborne Aircraft Carrier).
In the pre-war years the US had explored the ‘parasite’ fighter concept by launching biplanes from airships, but the AAC would have taken this to an entirely new level.
The study was performed in the early 1970s under a contract from the US Air Force Flight Dynamics Laboratory (USAF FDL) at Wright-Patterson AFB and suggested using a 747-200 as a ‘mothership’ containing up to ten Boeing Model 985-121 ‘microfighters’. The AAC would launch the fighters through a launch-bay hatch in its belly and not only could it refuel them in flight it could also retrieve them and reload them with weapons ahead of their next sortie.
There would be a sliding deck and pressures hatches which would pressurise and depressurise during launch and retrieval. The plan also called for the 747 to carry enough fuel and ordinance to support three missions by each of the micofighters. Suffice to say, the aircraft was never built…
The MC-747 concept called for a fleet of missile patrol aircraft on 24/7 airborne alert each carrying four Minuteman III nuclear ICBMs. (Boeing Archives) Similar in concept to the 747AAC – and equally optimistic was the late 1970s proposal to create a 747 CMCA (Cruise Missile Carrier Aircraft).
By this time the US was placing great confidence in its cruise missile programme and while the political wranglings over the development and building of the Rockwell B-1 Lancer played out the USAF needed a means to launch its missiles from the air.
Turning to the trusty 747, the boffins proposed converting the airframe to carry between 70 and 100 AGM-86 ALCM cruise missiles, which would be fired from up to eight rotary launchers. Launching would be through a side door at the rear of the fuselage.
Needless to say, such a heavily-armed slow-moving ‘airliner’ would make easy prey for enemy fighters and the plan was abandoned in favour of more conventional strategic bombers.
This wasn’t the end of the armed 747 concept though as the MC-747 programme proposed a fleet of missile patrol aircraft on 24/7 airborne alert each carrying four Minuteman III nuclear ICBMs. It was felt that air launching the missiles (from large bomb bay doors grafted into the belly of the airliner) would improve their range by 15% if dropped in level flight at 30,000ft or 25% if launched in a climb. However, the thought of such a craft being shot down amidst a cloud of plutonium chloride simply does not bear thinking about!
Two different 747 Trijet configurations were proposed but neither made it off the drawing board. (Boeing Archives)
With oil prices rising and a need for fuel economy, Douglas created the three-engined DC-10 and Lockheed developed the similarly configured L-1011 TriStar in the late 1960s. Offering better fuel economy than many four-engined types and greater redundancy than twin-jet airliners the new breed of trijets were of commercial concern to Boeing and it began developing a three-engined variant of the 747 to compete.
The 747-300 was configured with the centre engine fitted in the tail with an S-duct intake similar to the Tristar’s and on paper the project promised greater payload, range and passenger capacity than the competition but engineering studies revealed that a major redesign of the wing would have been be necessary in order to maintain the same 747 handling characteristics (and thus minimise pilot retraining) so Boeing decided not to pursue the project and developed the shortened four-engine 747SP instead.
Over the years many stretched 747 concepts have been proposed. This is the 747X from the 1990s. (Boeing Archives)
The basic 747 airframe could be dismantled into elements at convenient ‘break points’ and this also gave the option to stretch the airframe relatively easily if required. Fuselage ‘plugs’ could be inserted both fore and aft of the wing and in 1970s Boeing began exploring the options for longer fuselages.
In theory, the standard 747-100 airframe could be stretched by up to 50ft but the initial plans were far less radical. The first proposal saw a 5ft plug ahead of the wing and an 11ft one aft, creating an airframe that could accommodate 666 passengers in short haul configuration or 472 in long range configuration. Another saw 25ft and 12ft plugs added fore and aft to create a 716 or 544 seater.
Boeing also proposed a full length upper deck (without a fuselage stretch) that would result in a 847/624 seat configuration and even a stretched upper deck ‘with’ a 25ft stretched fuselage resulting in up to 1,000 seats in short range fit. These were ultimately shelved due to the 1973 oil crisis but the stretched upper deck work did lead to the later 747-200SUD/300/400 versions.
Boeing also revisited the stretch concept as recently as the 1990s, announcing the 747-500X and 600X at the 1996 Farnborough Airshow. These would have featured a new 251ft span wing derived from the Boeing 777, more powerful engines and larger landing gear. The -500X concept featured a fuselage stretch of 18ft (taking it to 250ft in total) allowing it to carry 462 passengers. The -600X stretched the fuselage even further to 279ft and was claimed to seat 548 passengers. There was also a plan for an extra wide bodied 747-700X but with no interest from customers all three were shelved after the merger with McDonnell Douglas in 1997.
NASA evaluated a large underbelly cargo pod modification and concluded that tailplane fins would be needed to retain directional stability. There was no mention of how long the undercarriage legs would need to be! (NASA)
It wasn’t just Boeing that had grand designs for this aviation classic and in February 1980 NASA’s Langley Research Center published an abstract investigating the possibilities of mating an outsize cargo pod to the belly of a 747-100.
The basic design requirement was the rapid deployment of a combat loaded mobile missile launcher from a US east coast base to Europe. The weight would have been minimised by stripping the aircraft of unneeded, quick removal items and by utilising graphite-epoxy composite materials for most pod components. A 0.03 scale model of the concept was tested in the wind tunnel but never progressed to a full-scale prototype.
Analysis showed that the 747 configured with the pod had a range of 2,900 miles based on a maximum take-off gross weight of 775,000lbs. At a test Reynolds number of 1.08 x 1,000,000 the addition of the pod resulted in an increase in total drag of approximately 20% and the pod produced a significant decrease in directional stability that would have needed tailplane tip fins to restore controllability, particularly at the lower angles of attack.
Blended wing body airliners have been discussed for decades and this 747-XL concept was floated by NASA in 1991. (NASA)
Another stillborn NASA proposal was the 747-XL blended wing concept. Using hybrid laminar flow for pitch and roll control the XL promised to accommodate between 600 and 800 in 50 abreast seating.
Had it been constructed, the XL would have been mostly built from composite materials but even then would have had a maximum take-off weight to 1,400,00lbs. NASA’s scientists proposed a Griffith/Goldschmied aerofoil section for the inboard section of the 300ft span wing and suggested the wing could fold to just 170ft for ground handling. Power would have come from four 95,000lb/thrust very high bypass ratio turbofans.
The original 747 concept (left) was a double decker and this format was once again considered in the 1990s for the New Large Aircraft concept (right). (Boeing Archives)
Although a double decker format had been rejected for the original 747-100 due to concerns over emergency egress Boeing revisited the concept on a number of occasions.
In the 1990s Boeing collaborated with several companies within the Airbus consortium on the Very Large Commercial Transport (VLCT) study – with an aim to share what was seen as a limited market. In 1994, Airbus announced its plan to develop its own double decker A3XX airliner (destined to become the A380) and Boeing decided to develop the VLCT into the New Large Aircraft (NLA) as a successor to the 747.
The NLA was eventually abandoned in favour of an overhaul of the original 747 to create the 747-400ER. Thought was also given to further developing the airframe raked wingtips to improve efficiency and sawtooth nacelles to reduce noise and these would later form integral parts of 747-8 programme that was launched in 2005.
Boeing 747 Zwiling? This concept was proposed by NASA but there is no evidence it ever progressed from the drawing board. (NASA)
When the double decker format was originally discounted thought was given to other ways of increasing capacity in the already enormous 747.
During World War Two, Germany had mated a pair of Heinkel He-111 bombers together with a central wing to create the He-111Z Zwilling (Twin) and towards the end of the conflict the US had created the P-82 Twin Mustang escort fighter, so it is perhaps not surprising that a 1976 NASA design concept proposed doing likewise with the 747.
The preliminary study was described as “a very large catamaran freighter” and combined two 747 fuselages to create an aircraft that was lighter weight and had increased payload, increased fuel economy and lower direct operating costs than two separate aircraft.
There is no evidence that the concept got beyond the study stage.
NASA originally proposed towing the Space Shuttle for glide testing but eventually decided to launch it from atop the SCA. (NASA)
Another 1976 NASA study saw the 747 proposed as the ideal aircraft to tow the prototype Space Shuttle aloft to evaluate its approach and landing characteristics. “The implementation of the tow concept requires only a minor structural modification in the nose section of the orbiter vehicle [and] requires minor modifications in the 747 cargo bay” says the proposal. It goes on to emphasise that the 747’s wake turbulence does not constitute a problem for the orbiter during take-off or climb to altitude, but ultimately the concept was dropped in favour of launching the orbiter from atop NASA’s 747 SCA.
Liquid hydrogen-powered 747 variants were discussed in the 1970s complete with large fuel tanks mounted on the wings. (Boeing Archives)
With recent advances in hydrogen-powered flight it is easy to forget that this technology has been under development for many decades. The first aircraft to fly with hydrogen was a Martin B-57 flown by NACA (the forerunner of NASA) in 1957 – using hydrogen for one of its two Wright J65 engines rather than jet fuel in the historic 20 minute flight.
The first airliner-sized to fly on hydrogen was an adapted Tupolev Tu-154 that flew in April 1988, but Boeing had been working on concepts since the mid-1970s. The need to carry large quantities of liquid hydrogen (compared to conventional kerosene) meant that the aircraft needed approximately 24,000 cubic feet of fuel storage but engineers quoted in the media at the time felt that even with the necessary cryogenic insulation in the tanks the weight of the units would be approximately equivalent to dummy tanks made of wood. The concepts include variants with engines moved to the tail and/or to the wingtips.
Sadly, the world has yet to see a hydrogen-powered 747 – but with type’s proven longevity and ongoing demand from cargo operators it is not beyond the realms of possibility that an example will be retrofitted with such a powerplant in the future.
While it is famous for opening up the world of cheap air travel it will be in the cargo role that the aircraft will serve the longest. (Boeing)
These ‘what ifs’ represent just a handful of the proposed 747 developments which included a 1990's proposal for a Super-AWACS, a 1971 suggestion of an asymmetrical three engine version with two powerplants on one wing and one engine on the other and a 1970s bomber that would have boasted a 65ft bomb bay capable of carrying seven 57,000lb or two 200,000lb bombs.
As the KC-33A it was pitted against the Douglas DC-10/KC-10 during the 1970s Advanced Cargo Transport Aircraft (ACTA) programme and as the C-33 it was also pitched for the 1990s Non-Developmental Airlift Aircraft project for a commercial freighter to supplement the C-17 in USAF service. There was even the Air Force Rocket Propulsion Laboratory’s Air Launched Sortie Vehicle (ALSV) 1982 concept that saw a Space Shuttle RL-10 rocket mounted in a 747 tail to enable it to launch a space ‘plane from its back.
However, it is in the commercial aviation world that the 747 really made its mark – and continues to do so more than five decades after its maiden flight. In that time the worldwide fleet has logged more than 42billion nautical miles, equivalent to 101,500 trips from the Earth to the Moon and back. It has also flown 3.5billion people - the equivalent of more than half of the world's population.
Today sees the handover of the final 747* ever produced. Everyone knew that the programme could not last forever and the aviation landscape has changed dramatically in the last five decades. More fuel efficient and versatile aircraft have largely taken over the 747s passenger role but the Queen of the Skies looks set to soldier on for many years yet in the freight role.
Production may now be over, but the 747 won’t be disappearing from our skies anytime soon. It is not inconceivable that this giant of the skies could still be plying its trade when the tie comes to mark the type’s centenary in 2069. *Although this aircraft is the final 'new' 747 to be delivered, Boeing Defense retains two 747-8i airframes that it is converting to VC-25B format for the USAF. Although these will be delivered after this 'final delivery' the aircraft were produced long before and originally destined for Transaero, but the Russian carrier ceased operations before taking receipt of them. Already handed over to Boeing Defense, Space & Security for conversion, they are categorised by the company’s Commercial Airplanes division as already having been delivered.
Global SuperTanker Services highly-modified 747 water bomber has now received US Government approval to fight wildfires by the Department of Agriculture.
GE has retired its Boeing 747-100 engine testbed aircraft after nearly 50 years in service.