Death of 747 now 'reasonably possible' says Boeing Six months after slicing production of the iconic Boeing 747 to just one plane a month, the aerospace company has decided to halve the rate of production and flagged it is close to killing off the plane. A new Form 10-Q filed with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission spells out the ugly situation as “Lower-than …
The requirement isn't to make an airport with just one engine working, it's to make it with one engine not working. The same thing for a 777 but completely different for a 747.
Incidentally the ETOPS times for range from an airport are airline specific and each aircraft has to be individually certified for ETOPS use.
Pity. The 747 is a workhorse whose reliability and service life is legendary. Unfortunately, the horse-pulled Clapham Omnibus went the same way when horses did nothing more harmful than shovel hay in at one end and provide for roses from t'other. The invention of the new-fangled petrol-powered engine did for it as modern aircraft have done for the 747.
When the last one rolls off the production line a lot of people will fondly remember the passing of a great aircraft.
The B52 bomber was introduced in the 1950s and is still in service. Don't expect the 747 to disappear from the radar screens anytime soon. Except, unfortunately, for those still in service with Air Malaysia.
"[...] the horse-pulled Clapham Omnibus went the same way when horses did nothing more harmful than shovel hay in at one end and provide for roses from t'other."
Even with gardeners paying boys to supply buckets of the stuff - there was still an excessive oversupply on the roads. The major pollution problem was an incentive to switch to apparently cleaner methods of propulsion.
"The B52 bomber was introduced in the 1950s and is still in service."
The B52 - military aircraft in general - fly a lot less hours each year than passenger planes. That means the airframes of the B52 have much less wear on them. Fuel cost is also much less an issue for the military.
Even so, the number of B52s still flying is way down from a few decades ago (less than a hundred are still in service), and every couple of years a new plan is launched to re-engine the Buff with 4 newer and more economical engines to replace the 8 ancient ones.
"Don't expect the 747 to disappear from the radar screens anytime soon."
No it will not.
But the passenger versions are already disappearing in large numbers.
The freighters will probably keep flying for the next 2 decades or so.
The C-47/DC-3/Dakota would be a better example than the B52, because they're mainly (only?) used in civilian service these days. The last ones were produced in the 40's but there's still hundreds still in regular use.
The tenth DC3 ever made is still in regular commercial use!
Actually, they aren't all that great to fly in anymore. To me at least, the A340 is a lot more comfortable (especially less noisy), and the denser seating in economy means the spacious "feel" of a 747 is something of the past. Ditto the 787, and to a lesser extent the 777 regarding the noise. Our trip to Cuba from Amsterdam in the 787 from TUI was nice because the advertised better internal climate of the 787, due to lower cabin pressure and slightly higher humidity, was indeed noticeable, but the noise felt the same as a modern 737, and louder than the 340 I flew in to Amman a few years ago.
The A380 is definitely the best of the best in terms of cabin experience. I've flown three different carriers and all four classes on the A380 and it's never been less than superb. I flew in a 4-week old B787 a few months back and it was in the same class as the 380, but not quite as good, IMHO.
The 747's are showing their age in comparison. When I first started doing long-haul, I was super excited to be on a jumbo jet. But now, my heart sinks a little when I see it on the gate. Noisy, cold and frequently a little tired around the edges.
"The A380 is definitely the best of the best in terms of cabin experience. I've flown three different carriers and all four classes on the A380 and it's never been less than superb."
Avoid Air France if you want to keep that feeling!!! Even they can make the A380 experience terrible. I've flown the A380 with other carriers and it was as superb as you say, but my one experience with it on Air France was truly, truly awful...
"[...] and the denser seating in economy means the spacious "feel" of a 747 is something of the past."
Flying BOAC 747 London to Jo'burg in 1972 - everyone in economy had a window seat if they wished.
The 1973 Middle-East oil price hikes changed all that. On the return flight in 1974 the SAA 747 was packed to capacity - going the long way round with a refuelling stop at Luanda.
Same here flying out of Miami the day the Dolphins played in the superbowl. More crew that PAX on that flight. Well, it was PAN-AM so that was to be expected.
As for Air France. They are able to make even the best aircraft fell shitty even when brand spanking new.
Even Air Madagascar was better than them when flying to Tana.
> bad mouthed Air France have been downvoted.
In the old days at Galileo we always referred to them as "Air Chance"..
They are (by far) the worst carrier I ever flew on. But at least they did manage to extend my stay in Bergen by a few days (and put us up in a nice hotel on the way there when their flight was delayed and we missed our connection at Schipol) by managing to make sure that our Sun E450 servers shipped with them (theoretically on the same flight as us) ended up somewhere in Germany instead of in Bergen with us. Which was nice.
I suspect my colleage wasn't so sanguine - his luggage ended up in the same place but managed not to make it to us before we left Bergen. One reason why I now always make sure I have enough medication for my stay+extra in my hand luggage as well as some in my hold baggage.
Best carrier was SAS (by a long way). Good food (for airline values of good), good seats, punctual and as much akavit as I could handle.
Air france initially refused to let me travel on a flight from singapore to paris on an Italian passport because I didn't have a visa to France. They wanted me to buy an ticket to Italy.
After many hours of arguing the finally decided that I could fly. So many WTFs that day.
@Uncle
I flew a 787 last summer to Borneo, lovely plane alright but they could learn a thing or two from Airbus about the seats. The one thing that annoyed me was the head rests weren't hinged to offer head support when snoozing. I struggle to sleep on planes at the best of times, that lack of attention cost me quite a bit of kip!
The seats are generally down to the carrier rather than the manufacturer. An identical plane from two carriers will have completely different interiors, following the corporate look and feel.
The last 744 I was on was an ageing Qantas bird (VHOEB - yes I'm sad and I log my flights in flightdiary.net) and it was a great flight. Overnight from Tokyo to Sydney in the front row on the upper deck.
Beware of the 787 - they're narrow and a lot of carriers provide 3-4-3 seating in the back, complete with in-flight entertainment boxes under the seats taking up all of your leg room. If you're in a fancier cabin you won't have an issue and you'll get a great sleep as they're quiet and the atmosphere is far better than the 747. Not been on an A350 but I suspect it has similar positives. The A380 is a great plane, although I'll admit I've only ever been upstairs.
> complete with in-flight entertainment boxes under the seats taking up all of your leg room
That's a problem on A330s too. I Got off a Qatar flight a couple of years back with an incredibly painful knee as a result of having to bend it at an odd angle for 6 hours to fit. (Medics' first suspicion was DVTs as I'd been unable to leave my seat the entire flight thanks to a "rather large" passenger in the aisle seat who downed a few drinks and passed out for the entire flight.)
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> I still haven't flown in a 747. I hope that I tick this box before they finally go out of service.
Go business class and get a seat on the upstairs deck. It's a small cabin with a 2+2 configuration.
http://www.seatguru.com/airlines/British_Airways/British_Airways_Boeing_747-400_C.php
I still haven't flown in a 747
I did once. A few years back O'Hare had weather issues and we were delayed leaving San Jose. I thought I'd miss my BMI flight(*) back to Blighty so got them to put me on a later BA flight. That meant I ended up on the last 747 out of O'hare. It was quite impressive sitting in the middle with seats as far as the eye could see to left and right (well - almost :) ). The take off felt different as well. Kind 'lumbering' but with a sense of power. A bit like a charging elephant could be said to be 'lumbering' :)
(*)That was the trip from hell. Arrived late at SJ to find horrendous queues at the terminal, stretching out onto the drop-off point. Managed to persuade a security guard to let us down to the check-in. Got through to departures only to discover flight on hold. Waited three hours in SJ departure lounge (thank you for your sympathy). Arrived late at O'Hare to discover BA flight being held for us. Misread sign and ran over to the wrong terminal. Ran all the way back. Got onto plane. Noted that my original flight was still there but in final boarding. New flight was still in 'delayed'. Sat on new flight for an hour waiting for more stragglers.
Got to destination (London) and had to wait over an hour for the next BMI flight to Manchester (which is why I went with them originally). Finally arrived at Manchester after 25 hours without any real sleep. Suffered from 'land sickness' for most of the next day.
When I contacted BMI to get the London to Manchester flight refunded they had no problems doing that but they pointed out that my original flight had left O'Hare about 15 minutes after I got there so I could've got home a lot earlier.
Oh well.
The only time I've ever flown in a 747 me & the missus got upgraded to Thai's "Royal Executive" class on the way out to Delhi in '92 - very nice start to a holiday. Would happily not have got off at the other end. Spent the holiday wondering whether it'd happen on the way back, but no such luck.
If you're into technology, https://www.itvv.com/ do really good cockpit DVDs & I've bought most of 'em: the Virgin Atlantic 747-400 is excellent, and the Virgin 747-200 shows how it was done in the days of steam. The Cathy 747's not so good, but has an interesting section in the simulator. Best of the lot is, of course, Concorde, on two DVDs.
The A320 simulator DVD's also good, with Alan Dix demonstrating rejected takeoffs & colourful ties.
@Admiral Grace Hopper, British Airways is still the largest B744 operator on the planet (with 39 planes), so you can nab a nice flight with them (if you have the new cabin, the World Traveller+ seats are lovely). Flights include Accra (Ghana), Beijing, Boston, Chicago, Cape Town, Denver, Dubai, Johannesburg, Kuwait, Las Vegas, Mexico City, Miami, Nairobi (Kenya), JFK (obviously), Phoenix, San Diego (this is the newest route), Seattle, Toronto and Washington DC.
I love the 747 for these flights - even with BA's pack-em-in mentality and grim deep blue decor they feel more airy than the 777. But I haven't seen one on the Nairobi route for a while, it's been a clapped out 777 recently which I presume are being decanted from Transatlantic flights now the 787s are arriving.
A couple of years ago there was a celebration for the 1500 aircraft built. I believe it was a Lufthansa aircraft.
Not sure how accurate this statement is but it was the best I could find at short notice: https://www.quora.com/How-many-747s-are-still-in-active-service
If that is accurate, then we are probably talking about 40% still in use.
Most of the 747s you'll see nowadays are the -400 or -8 models. Occasionally if you're lucky (and consider such things to be luck) you'll see an older one. I spotted the Bahrain Royal 747 SP at Heathrow last year. Weird seeing such a small one.
When passenger planes go out of service they are often sold on to other carriers or to freight companies, where they are suitably converted.
"I wonder what percentage of all Jumbos manufactured are still flying?"
What kills jets is flight cycles. The constant pressurisation/depressurisation means that they have to be retired eventually, or risk the fuselage popping.
The only older ones you'll see are non-commercial units with low use rates.
@ Francis Boyle; After a few years they'll be standing around, pointing out that the only thing stopping the plane being technically finished is the lack of a magazine holder on the back of one of the seats, and they're sure it's not illegal to fly without it anyway. Just then someone from production rushes in with that month's output, *half* of a magazine holder.
Meanwhile, Zeno will be going "Ha ha ha! Aha ha ha ha ha! Muwahahahaha!"
Zeno was a tosspot. The limit of v * t, as t tends towards zero, is zero. If you plot the distances travelled by Achilles and the arrow against time, you see that at some point, the arrow has travelled further than Achilles (who starts some distance away from the archer, moving more slowly than the arrow). Meaning that some time in between, they must have met.
The only thing remotely close to a paradox is that you spend increasingly long amounts of time, describing events that are taking place over increasingly short amounts of time, in an effort to avoid the unavoidable.
Zeno came so close to inventing calculus, and yet decided that it was more fun to confuse stupid people by spouting on about this stuff than actually do anything useful with it that smart people might appreciate. That's knob behaviour where I come from.
Flown 747 many times trans Atlantic, never liked them, and always found them cramped, noisy and uncomfortable.
I much prefer newer designs and Airbus in particular.
I don't doubt that when they were new they were revolutionary, but that's before I was born, and that's a long time ago now... I can't disagree that they are iconic, famous and very numerous, but it's probably best to retire them for something better.
"It seemed gigantic. Monstrous."
My first commercial flight was in a 747 in 1972. Didn't really see anything from the Heathrow loading tunnel - as it was a night flight.
Next afternoon we disembarked in bright sunlight at Jo'burg. No tunnel - just old-style steps onto the apron. That's when I appreciated just how big the plane was - especially the engine nacelles towering above us.
One thing many people forget is that back in the 747's heyday seating was a lot less cramped. Cattle class then compares favourably with business class now. Right now the workloads of the A380s in service are relatively undemanding, and roomy configurations are the norm. Wait for a few 800 plus seat configurations to enter service. Place a bet on which carrier will be the first to jam in 1000, it's going to happen.
Imagine the earth were actually a bubble containing a perfect vacuum. We could get rid of planes and instead travel by pressurised pod which goes into the ground via an airlock in London and pops out at the other airlock at Sydney, freefalling all the way, using NO ENERGY AT ALL!!!!!! (x 100)
I thought I'd raise it in case someone wants to throw 20 billion my way to 'develop it', despite the teething problems*
---
*
1) The earth is really rather full of stuff
2) If it weren't, we'd lose our orbit, find it difficult to stick to the ground, we'd occasionally risk collapse of the whole thing, tides would be problematic, we'd not have plate techtonics, and ignoring all that (and more), you'd have to use some sort of propellant to direct you to your portal of choice, and eventually the world would be full of propellant residues.
3) Etc.
> We could get rid of planes and instead travel by pressurised pod which goes into the ground via an airlock in London and pops out at the other airlock at Sydney, freefalling all the way, using NO ENERGY AT ALL!!!!!! (x 100)
And the time for the trip is calculated here:
http://m.forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/4/2016/05/12/hyperloop/#c_2864209
Note: the pressure at the centre of the earth is about 3.6 million atmospheres. Your pressurised pod (or the lift shaft) needs to be pretty strong.
Brussels to Kinshasa, in SABENA economy class, sat in the middle of the cabin next to a Belgian couple with a small poodle entirely covered in diamonds. Just in time to arrive for the outbreak of GW1.
(Fight back much better, on a Swissair 737(?) in daylight with a window seat -- fantastic views of Africa from mount Cameroun to the Sahara, then the med and swiss Alps to Geneva).
Flew many times on 747s and had a chance to sit in the cockpit on a KLM flight once from Miami to Mexico City (fried of mine was a check pilot for KLM). What a cool/odd experience. Not sure I can explain it, but it was like you were totally disconnected from the rest of that lumbering mass behind you - totally isolated in your own little world.
Still an amazing plane for it's time, and I fondly remember flying Pan Am to Rio right before they shut down. Sat upstairs but spent most of the trip with the crew reminiscing about their time with Pan Am and how much they were going to miss their jobs.
I try to explain to my daughter how flying used to be a fun, no hassle experience - almost a luxury and something you actually looked forward to - but it's just so different now it's hard for her to comprehend getting to the airport 20 minutes before your flight, going straight to the gate and getting on a plane with decent seats (and legroom!), filled with mostly pleasant people and crew. Makes me sad she'll never have that experience.
My first commercial flight was a support trip for the company. What started off as "next month" soon became an urgent "can you go on Saturday". In those days you had to have had a smallpox vaccination. So I flew on the first permitted day with a large blister on my upper arm. Every so often throughout the 12 hour flight the small kid in the seat behind would jab my sore spot.
I only found out later that BOAC were happy to give interested people a tour of the upstairs bar and the flight deck. You just had to ask nicely.
I have spent too much time inside 747s in my 35 years of travelling. Way too much time.
Australia <-> UK, some 14 return trips + across the Pacific to the US some 5 times. And countless cross-country hauls on some rather geriatric and unreliable (since retired) jumbos.
Still, the old 747 is why I was able to afford to travel so much. Plenty of seats meant cheaper seats. Heck, seats are cheaper today than they were 30 years ago (in relative terms).
My preferred long-haul-caboose is now the A380. A wonder of space, comfort and quiet. Makes a 777 seem like the old 747s.
---
Swing low sweet chariot, come down easy
Taxi to the terminal zone,
Cut your engines, cool your wings,
And let me make it to the telephone.
I thought that one of the reasons of Wide bodied jets like the 747 were favoured by the airlines was the limited landing slots at popular Airports. Popular routes get a 747 to the 'hub' and smaller planes used to feed in and out I suspect most air travel expansion in recent years has not been on the popular routes. It would be good to hear how that aspect fits into current and projected travel.
ETOPS
"Engines Turn Or Passengers Swim"
I like it, have an upvote!
ETOPS "Extended-range Twin-engine Operational Performance Standards". ETOPS applies to twins on routes with diversion time more than 60 minutes at one engine inoperative speed.
This is also why Emirates will continue to fly the A380 (and pressure Airbus into building an A380neo).
The airline has pretty much all of the spectrum covered... from long and thin routes to long and fatter routes to really fat routes with slot shortages. Etihad and Qatar work on a similar model, which is why you're likely to see a mix of models on a specific route.
Boeing's model with the 787 changed to specifically cover point-to-point, whereas the A380 was designed for hub-to-hub traffic. With the A350ULR, Singapore Airlines can finally restart its SIN-JFK service again, which was known to be *the* longest non-stop route on the planet before the withdrawal of the A340-600 from their fleet terminated that service.
"Popular routes get a 747 to the 'hub' and smaller planes used to feed in and out"
The A380 was designed for this kind of hub-and-spoke setup.
Boeing decided that there should be more direct flights and sized the 787 accordingly (Airbus having followed suit with the A350)
Airlines do seem to be moving away from hub/spoke, so Boeing might have called it right.
I had a conversation with a mechanic who mentioned they had a 747 engine repair job where someone screwed up a bit of metal near the engine and Boeing couldn't get a replacement assembly to them in a reasonable time so they sent the plans on how to make the replacement part. It was effectively a metal sandwich with some kevlar sheeting in between and parts of it were labeled "flack shield".
I've heard that some of the original B52 tooling recently showed up near Wichita. It would be very interesting if that would lead to remaking some major sections of the BUFFs.
But the initial design is what, 50-55 years old now? How many plane designs can be said to have had that long a production run? None? The 747 and a few light general aviation aircraft?
And it is quite conceivable that production might go on at 6-12 planes/year for some time into the future.
I say we hoist a glass in honor of a classic plane that time is finally catching up with.
(Note: Icon in now way condones or wishes to encourage drinking + piloting a 4-engined airliner. Airline pilots will have to ask their ground crews to partake on their behalf.)
Japan Airlines used to have 747s with economy seats in the upper deck also. Figuring it was likely to be my only opportunity to travel up there I naturally selected an upper deck seat for a hop I did from Seoul to Tokyo in 2010.
I did actually fly in the business class nose section with KLM to Tokyo a couple of years ago but that was still only on an economy ticket (and with economy meals) - they must have only needed the upper deck for business class so decided to sell a few more economy tickets and opened up that section in the seat selection map on the web site. Got in there for the return leg as well!
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