The 747 is what you get when you tell the B-52 design team to make a big airliner.
I'm pretty sure that an Airbus equivalent wouldn't fare nearly as well with one engine out.
Exactly. The engines on the Airbus A340 are not as powerful. I'd bet if one one of them failed, the plane would immediately fall out of the sky.
This proves that Boeing's products are superior in quality.
In the 1970's I was on a 727 to Chicago from NYC. There was engine problems and they shut down the center engine. There was no talk of an emergency landing. The captain simply announced that it would take another 30 minutes to land in O'Hare. Obviously a transatlantic flight is a little different but the safety standards have been increased. Today we would have landed in Detroit.
Of course. The AirBus is just another dirty Fokker.
It would not have gotten FAA certification for operations with four engines if it could not operate with one engine shut down. A four engined plane does not require as much reserve power as a twin engined plane does. Any aircraft is required to be able to takeoff if one engine shuts down during takeoff.