Posted on 12/07/2022 6:14:01 PM PST by DUMBGRUNT
After more than five decades, aircraft manufacturer Boeing hit a bitter-sweet milestone on the evening of December 6th as the last Boeing 747 rolled out of its production line at Paine Field in Everett, Washington. The 1574th Boeing 747 will go through test flights before being delivered to Atlas Air early next January.
Having been in production since September 1968, the Boeing 747, often dubbed the 'Jumbo Jet' or the 'Queen of the Skies,' was designed by engineer Joe Sutter. With the ability to carry up to 524 passengers, the semi-double-deck quad-engined aircraft was twice the size of the Boeing 707, a smaller aircraft popularly used by several airlines during the 1960s.
(Excerpt) Read more at simpleflying.com ...
Never did get it to function!
I was also on an "orphan" flight, a 747 full of Vietnamese babies.
I have never flown in one, but I used to live close to O’Hate and always enjoyed watching them coming and going. That big bird makes an impressive take off.
O’Hare. Stupid autocorrect.
—” always enjoyed watching them coming and going. “
As a kid, it was a bit of a treat to watch the planes coming and going at O’Hare.
Usually from Irving Park Rd, we lived in Itasca. Do that today and a fair chance they would shoot first would and ask questions later.
Ping. Thought you might find this interesting!
Too many decades ago, was sitting on my surfboard off D&W beach and heard a really weird jet engine sound.
Flights took off from LAX right overhead all day, this one sounded very different.
Then comes this monster plane lumbering along. Looked slow, I suppose due to the size. Guess it was the turbofan engines gave it the much different intake sound under full throttle.
Was the movie shot on 35mm, Super 8 mmm or Regular 8 mm? Was the projector threaded properly—or the correct 8 mm format?
The original Pratt and Whitney engines simply were not durable and Boeing had to baby them or they would fail. P&W insisted that there was nothing wrong with the design so Boeing got the P&W president onboard one of the flights in the cockpit and showed him by first advancing the throttle on one of the engines where it promptly failed, Then they advanced the throttle of a second engine and it too failed. When the pilot reached for the third throttle the P&W president said “enough, I believe you”. P&W fixed the problem by stiffening the housing and the engine became the reliable workhorse that lasted thousands of hours.
Wow. A production run of 1574 aircraft. An incredible accomplishment. And Boeing basically bet the company's future on its success.
I flew on one only once, from Rome to JFK. It was a Pan Am flight IIRC.
I flew on a 747 Fall of 1993 first class from San Francisco to Hawaii. Incredible food as good as any 5 star restaurant. 7-8 entrees to pick from. Watched Jurrasic Park and started to watch “Dave” but fell asleep. The flight attendants were all young and all very attractive. The old FA were serving the steerage class. Company paid trip for 10 days for meeting a production goal.
That was fun!
Tanx.
The first 747 I ever saw was when I was 13 and I was hiking with my dad near the top of Mt. Dana in Yosemite. I think it was on the way to SFO and it was PanAm.
Yeah, that’s probably a big no-no. But I used to have to go to the USPS facility on Irving Park Road pretty often and the view was always good from there.
Still over 450 in the air, but mostly overseas.
Where were the Vietnamese babies going?
They were a bit different than regular sized planes. I flew on them a number of times on international flights. I recall one which was only half full so you had almost the entire rear part of the plane empty. I could flip up the arm rests and snooze completely horizontally with loads of pillows and blankets. Those days are long gone.
I have flown on them several times. If you were lucky enough to get one of seats in the front of the plane it was an extremely quiet flight.
On one flight from LAX to Hong Kong the plane hit clear air turbulence while they were serving a meal. The cart almost hit the ceiling and a flight attendant was injured.
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