The Boeing 747 is 55 Years Old, still Working Hard, carried 4-Billion Passengers and several Space Shuttles.
Fifty-five years ago today, on Feb. 9, 1969, the first Boeing 747 ever built completed its first flight. Called the City of Everett, it took off from a brand-new runway at Boeing’s specially built 747 factory in Everett, Washington. A new era in commercial aviation was born and the original jumbo jet started making history immediately.
The 747 is one of the greatest airplanes in aviation history. You will marvel at the amazing Boeing 747 and its five decades of extraordinary service.
Come and celebrate the 52th anniversary of this pedigree airplane.
Rarely do the commercial aviation and spirituality share the same conversation — unless it’s the 747 we’re talking about.
It’s hard to look at a 747 without focusing on its most distinctive feature — its upper deck. The position of this second-story annex. The upper-deck’s design is smoothly integral to the rest of fuselage.
The 747 design is a demonstration of the elegant, almost organic flow of the jet’s profile.
In the 1990s, Boeing ran a magazine promotion for the 747. It was a two-page, three-panel ad, with a nose-on silhouette of the plane against a dusky sunset.
“Where/does this/take you?” asked Boeing across the centerfold. Below this dreamy triptych, the text went on:
“A stone monastery in the shadow of a Himalayan peak. A cluster of tents on the sweep of the Serengeti plains. The Boeing 747 was made for places like these. Distant places filled with adventure, romance, and discovery. The 747 is the symbol for air travelers in the hearts and minds of travelers. It is the airplane of far-off countries and cultures. Where will it take you?”
Nothing nailed the plane’s mystique more than that ad.
The plane’s replacement is Boeing’s own 777-300, which can carry almost as may people as a 747, at around two-thirds of the operating costs, that has rendered the four-engine model otherwise obsolete. Pretty much every 777-300 that you see out there — and there are hundreds of them — would have been a 747 in decades past. The -300 has quietly become the premier jumbo jet of the 21st century.
Here are the 27 original customers.
Delta Air Lines
Eastern Airlines
Air India
National Airlines
World Airways
United Airlines
American Airlines
Air France
BOAC
Lufthansa
Sabena
Iberia
South African Airways
Air Canada
El Al
Braniff International
Scandinavian Airlines (SAS)
Swissair
Qantas
KLM
Aer Lingus
Alitalia
Northwest Airlines
Continental Airlines
Trans World Airlines (TWA)
Japan Airlines (JAL)
Pan American
Twenty-seven carriers got things rolling, though many more would follow.
KLM (The Netherlands) is the world’s oldest airline, and this logo, a masterpiece of simplicity, is still in use today, only barely altered. There are 17 747s in the KLM fleet. With United out of the picture, KLM joins Lufthansa, Qantas, El Al and BOAC/British Airways as the only members of the original 27 to have operated the jet continuously since 1970.
