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AMERICA has a doomsday plane. Actually it has four of them. But the US government does not — repeat, DOES NOT — talk openly about its doomsday planes. The doomsday plane is like a mirror to Air Force One — a great big flying working office for the president and his or her staff. But while Air Force One is your everyday, garden variety kind of presidential flying office, the doomsday plane is built and equipped to keep the US government running in the event of a nuclear war or other disaster. It’s a converted 747 called an E-4B, also...

WASHINGTON, Aug. 1, 2005 – Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld likes to take his office with him and stay connected to events on the ground when he flies overseas to visit with troops and confer with U.S. and allied military and civilian officials. Rumsfeld's "flying Pentagon" of choice is an Air Force E-4B aircraft, a highly modified Boeing 747-200 four-engine jet. Known as the National Airborne Operations Center, the plane boasts sophisticated communications equipment as well as the capability to be refueled in flight. The commander of the NAOC, Army Col. David L. Molinelli, pointed out July 24 during Rumsfeld's...

The Boeing 747 is being given to the United States Air Force/Department of Defense, NOT TO ME! It is a gift from a Nation, Qatar, that we have successfully defended for many years. It will be used by our Government as a temporary Air Force One, until such time as our new Boeings, which are very late on delivery, arrive. Why should our military, and therefore our taxpayers, be forced to pay hundreds of millions of Dollars when they can get it for FREE from a country that wants to reward us for a job well done. This big savings...

Engine fire on Atlas Air Boeing 747 departing from Miami Airport tonight. Flight circled back and landed a few minutes later.

Note: I discovered rather quickly that this video is a new simulation of the TWA800 disaster, but that is obviously NOT how it is presented. The following is how this video is presented by the YT publisher, 'the last mayday':Normally, the average flight from New York to Rome takes 8 hours and 24 minutes. Emphasizing 'normally.' However, during the horror flight of TWA 800, this was anything but normal. Just fifteen minutes after takeoff, the pilot received a distressing message:"Look at that crazy fuel flow indication on number four."What is going on here? Stay tuned!A Boeing 747-100, carrying 230 passengers...

An aviation era has come to an end as Boeing's last 747 has taxied out of the Everett, Washington factory, punctuating the jumbo jet's 54-year production run. The final craft, a 747-8 freighter, will be delivered to airplane-cargo biz Atlas Air after final tests in early 2023, Boeing revealed. While the 1,574th 747 will be the last one assembled, the familiar bulbous silhouette is hardly going to disappear from the skies overnight, according to Boeing VP and GM for the 747 and 767 programs, Kim Smith. "We are proud that this plane will continue to fly across the globe for...

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...

The Federal Aviation Administration has issued an airworthiness directive (AD) for Boeing aircraft stemming from the use of 5G wireless towers. According to the AD released Tuesday, the radio altimeters on Boeing 777s and 747-8s can “experience interference” from 5G C-band wireless towers. The AD is slated to be published in the Federal Register on January 27. According to the document, the AD “was prompted by the determination that radio altimeters cannot be relied upon to perform their intended function if they experience interference from wireless broadband operations in the 3.7-3.98 GHz frequency band (5G-C band).” Why This Matters The...

A 22-year-old Kenyan man was found in the wheel well of a cargo plane that had traveled from South Africa to the Netherlands, Dutch police said Monday. The man, whose identity was not released, was discovered hiding after the plane touched down Sunday at Schipol Airport in Amsterdam, police said in a statement. Flight Aware’s records show the plane maintaining an altitude of over 30,000 feet for the flight. “This is definitely very unusual that someone was able to survive the cold at such a height – very, very unusual,” Joanna Helmonds, a spokesperson for the Dutch Royal Marechaussee, a...

Most of these days, spectacular movie sequences are created by an army of visual effects specialists. However, every now and then, a director prefers to go the more traditional, analog route. Cheaper than CGI Christopher Nolan is described as “doing nothing by halves.” Meanwhile, in the age of computer-generated images and green screens, even for him, crashing an actual 747 into a building is unexpectedly real and hands-on. However, it turned out to be cheaper to buy an actual jumbo jet rather than construct miniatures and use CGI for the scene.

1982: The flight of BA9 It was back in 1982 when a British Airways Boeing 747 flew into a cloud of volcanic ash over Indonesia. Due to the airborne particles ingested, all four engines shut off. Technology.org quotes the captain as saying: “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We have a small problem. All four engines have stopped. We are doing our damnedest to get them going again. I trust you are not in too much distress”. With all four engines not functioning, the aircraft began to glide down towards the earth. Thankfully, one engine eventually regained function...

With a little help from a massive tailwind, of course. British Airways Boeing 747 traveled from New York to London in just four hours and 56 minutes, hitting a top ground speed of 825 miles per hour and setting a subsonic flight record for the route. That 250+ mph tailwind meant that the 747’s true airspeed was still below the speed of sound, but that doesn’t take away from how incredible it is to get across the Atlantic in just over four hours. It should be mentioned that while flight BA112 smashed the subsonic record, the fastest time from NYC...

It's an outcome that rival Boeing anticipated about 25 years ago when it outplayed Airbus with a brilliant bit of judo strategy (using Airbus's strength against itself), according to my 2008 book, You Can't Order Change: Lessons from Jim McNerney's Turnaround at Boeing... As the Journal reported, in 2000, Airbus bet over $10 billion on the 555-seat A380 because it wanted to replace Boeing's 50 year old 747 jumbo jet. The A380 went over budget due to development delays and while passengers liked the plane, airlines preferred Boeing's 787 Dreamliner or Airbus's A350... This A380 denouement was envisioned by Boeing's...

Out of Time Airbus CEO Tom Enders expressed regrets over the timing of the A380 program, saying, “There has been speculation that we were 10 years too early; I think it is clear that we were 10 years too late.” But it was closer to four decades too late, or perhaps three decades too soon. There was not enough demand for an aircraft that size by the time the A380 rolled out in 2005, as proven by the aircraft's inability to attract sizeable orders in its brief lifetime. The 747 has lasted five decades and still maintains a sizable share...

Kim Kardashian and Kanye West boarded a private 747 jet for a recent long-haul flight, sparking outrage over the extravagant method of travel. Kardashian, 38, showed off the spacious — and nearly empty — interior of the commercial-size airliner in a series of videos posted to her Instagram Stories. “No big deal, just taking a private 747,” Kardashian says, filming West, 41, walking up to the “double decker” plane. “This is how he does it now. Only 747s, private. I’ve never even heard of this, but whatever.” Travel & Leisure notes the plane could hold up to 660 passengers, and...

Delta Air Lines will fly a Boeing 747 on an farewell tour that wraps up in Minneapolis with a hangar party in December. Atlanta-based Delta (NYSE: DAL) is retiring its jumbo jets by the end of the year as it brings new Airbus A350 jets into service.

EDITED EXCERPT An Iranian businessman accused by the US government of violating sanctions on Tehran donated money to the Clinton Foundation, The Daily Beast has confirmed. Vahid Alaghband’s Balli Aviation Ltd, a London-based subsidiary of his commodities trading firm tried to sell 747's to Iran, despite a US federal ban. The company pleaded guilty to two counts of criminal information. The hefty sum imposed was “a direct consequence of the level of deception used to mislead investigators," Thomas Madigan, a top DOJ official, said at the time. Balli Aviation agreed to pay a $2 million criminal fine, serve five years...

U.S. Airlines are vying for attention as the Boeing 747 leaves their fleets, just as they did when it entered their fleets in 1970. And the world’s aviation geeks are watching closely. United announced Monday that its final Boeing 747 flight will take place Nov. 7 with a celebratory recreation of its first United flight from San Francisco to Honolulu. Twenty-eight minutes later, at 3:47 p.m. Monday, Delta announced that it recently operated its final Boeing 747 Tokyo Narita-Honolulu flight (on Sept. 5), and that it had operated what were thought to be the final domestic 747 flights from Honolulu...

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Air Force, which has been looking for ways to lower the cost of new planes for Air Force One, is talking to Boeing about buying two jumbo jets that were ordered but never delivered to a now-defunct Russian airline. The Air Force and Boeing confirmed Tuesday that they are working on a deal involving Boeing 747s but declined to disclose further details.

Joe Sutter, who was dubbed “Father of the 747” by the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, has died at age 95. As the former chief engineer of Boeing’s 747, Sutter is credited with leading the birth of the first widebody airliner, which ushered in the globe-shrinking age of mass air travel.