Even before it rolled out in September 1968 airline interior designers were scratching their heads on how to use the enormous space that the 747 provided.

For this giant was more than twice the size of the Boeing 707 it would replace.

READ: Boeing’s supersized factory the world’s largest building 

Lounges, piano bars, cocktail bars, and downstairs galleys were all introduced. American Airlines kicked things off with this bar at the back of the economy section.

Continental Airlines, now part of United, also had an economy lounge (below).

And not to be left out Trans World Airlines also had an economy (coach) lounge (below).

Qantas used the upper deck as its First Class Captain Cook lounge us under.

To get to the upper deck there was a spiral staircase.

In economy, passengers luxuriated in a 2-4-3 interior with seats set 36 inches apart – this really was the spacious age.

While all those concepts made it onto the 747 – at least for a while there are many that did not and were too off the wall for airline executives.

The 747 downstairs Tiger Lounge made for great photos – but was never taken up.

Not content with one try,  Boeing rolled out the downstairs “Austin Powers Lounge” under the floor some 20 years before Austin Powers was made famous by Mike Myers in 1997.

Boeing also looked at putting windows in the roof of its 747-8I series in an effort to make it more appealing.

Also, a business class club made it into the roof of the 747-8I as well as sleeping cabins – but only in mock-up form.

The post The Jumbo’s Crazy And Not So-Crazy Interiors appeared first on Airline Ratings.

They were also not anticipating that the 747 would end up logging more than 57 billion nautical miles (121.5bn km) — the equivalent of 137, 293 trips from the Earth to the moon — and fly more than 5.9 billion people.

Their attention was very much on how this somewhat controversial giant of the skies would perform.

The plan had been for the first flight of the Boeing 747 to take place on the anniversary of the Wright brothers’ historic flight but delays had scotched that idea.

Instead, it had unintentionally hit another date: the sixth anniversary of the first flight of the 727.

The man heading the engineering team that built the plane, the late Joe Sutter, recalled in his fascinating book on the 747 that he felt “keyed up” as RA001 taxied along the runway.

“There was no doubt in my mind that the 747 would fly; the only question was how well,’’ he wrote.

“A quiet thrill of elation buoyed me as I chatted with our three-man flight-test crew.

“Project pilot Jack Wadell would take our baby aloft with the help of Brien Wygle to his right and Jess Wallick behind them in the flight deck as flight engineer.

“We called this  fine team of aviators the ‘Three Ws’.”

The world’s first jumbo jet accelerated down the runway and cheers and applause broke out as the nose lifted and it took off.

“A lump constricted my throat,’’ Sutter recalled. “Unable to say anything, I watched the plane bank into a shallow turn and return for a prearranged pass over the field for the benefit of Boeing workers and global press corps.”

Despite Wygle’s comment that the 747 was “flying beautifully”,  a minor structural failure in one of the aircraft’s flaps prompted the first flight to be cut short and Sutter still had his fingers crossed as it landed.

Watch the best Boeing 747 air-to-air videos

There had been controversy about whether pilots perched three floors above the ground could judge the landing and safely get the big plane back on the ground.

“This was definitely on my mind as RA0001 turned from the base leg to final approach,’’ Sutter said. “Before my eyes, it descended to the runway with the stately majesty of an ocean liner. It flared gently and touched down very, very smoothly.

“That moment was my biggest thrill of the day. All my worries evaporated and I knew we had a good airplane.”

That first flight lasted 75 minutes and, according to Sutter, proved that the 747 flew well, was stable and had light controls with well-balanced forces.

“This is a flying arrow,” Wadell declared after the flight. “A pilot’s airplane.”

The 747 was the result of work by about 50,000 people, dubbed “the Incredibles”, who built the aircraft in less than 16 months.

That first plane was 225ft (68.5m) long with a tail as tall as a six-story building and required the construction of a 200-million-cubic foot (5.6m cu. m) plant at Everett, near the US city of Seattle.

It carried a ton of air when it was pressurized,  its cargo hold had room for 3400 pieces of baggage and its total wing area was bigger than a basketball court.

Boeing was not the only company producing technological marvels in 1969, which was also the year Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon.

Concorde would make its first test flight on March 2 but the 747, the first widebody to reach the 1500 unit milestone, would be the plane with the widest impact for the biggest number of people.

The 747’s first flight was the start of a grueling flight test program that would include a flyover at the 1969 Paris Air Show.

But on December 30, 1969, the 747 was certified by the US Federal Aviation Administration and could be delivered to launch customer Pan-Am.

Pan-Am had been crucial to the development of the plane thanks to backing by legendary president Juan Trippe.

Trippe and Boeing boss Bill Allen had seen the plane as a way of promoting mass travel in increasingly congested skies and they had defied the critics to bring it into service.

They triggered a transformation that began when the plane entered service on January 21, 1970, as the Clipper Constitution flew from New York’s John F. Kennedy International  Airport to London Heathrow.

Although much of the media attention would focus on often quirky lounges for the well-heeled,  the giant plane also fascinated the general public.

It would be the public that would benefit as airlines embraced the 747 to make it the Queen of the Skies, boosting competition and adding thousands of cheaper seats.

Air travel in the 1960s was still an expensive exercise and when the 747 was introduced in 1970, the cost of a return airfare from Australia to London was the equivalent of 24 weeks of Australian average weekly earnings.

By 1990, it was about five weeks of average weekly earnings and by 2000, this had reduced to two weeks.

Today, it is often below one week’s earnings, although legroom has shrunk by up to 10cms.

The success of the plane would ultimately be such that, for many people, international flights became synonymous with the 747.

Whether it was a Singapore Airlines’  “Megatop” or a Qantas “Longreach, there was always a feeling that sitting economy was like traveling in a giant room.

The jumbo evolved over the years, increasing in size and, more importantly, gaining range.

There were also some interesting variants.

NASA modified two 747-100s to carry space shuttles, two 747-200Bs have served as Air Force One and a 747-400 freighter was “weaponized” for use as a platform with the US Air Force’s Airborne Laser Program.

Minor modifications allowed Japanese carriers to adapt the plane as a domestic shuttle, the 747SR, and there was a hybrid version of the 747-200 that was half passenger plane and half freighter known as the Combi.

A truncated version, known as the 747SP, was designed to allow Pan-Am to fly the longer range,  high business traffic route between New York and Tokyo.

The sporty SP lost traction when engine improvements allowed the 747-200B to match its range.

The 200B, in turn, would be superseded in 1983 when the 747-300 arrived with an extended dome for additional upper deck seating.

But no version of the 747 would match the success of the most popular variant, the 747-400, which arrived in 1989.

A newer version of the plane designed to compete with the Airbus A380 superjumbo, the 747-8, was introduced with a longer fuselage and the same engine and cockpit technology as the Boeing 787.

The General Electric GEnx-2B engines, raked wingtips and other improvements produced a 30 percent smaller noise footprint and a 15 percent reduction in carbon emissions through lower fuel consumption. Other advantages included fewer parts and less maintenance.

However, the days of the four-engine passenger plane were already waning by the time the 747-8i was delivered and it has only been ordered by a handful of airlines:  Lufthansa, Korean Air and Air China.

Most of the 747-8s ordered have been freighters, although there is also a handful of business/VIP jets and two due to become the next Air Force One in the US.

That the plane is still in production is a testament to Boeing’s foresight in developing freighter versions, something Airbus was unable to do for its A380, which is now out of production.

The post White knuckles at first 747 flight over 52 years ago appeared first on Airline Ratings.

The 747, like the legendary DC-3 of the 1930s, slashed airfares to make travel affordable for all.

The incredible DC-3 was the first plane that was able to make money just hauling passengers and freed airlines from restrictive mail contracts, while the 747 freed the world’s population to travel wherever they liked.

Bill Gates said that the 747 or jumbo was “the world first world wide web” as it smashed barriers between people and countries.

SEE: The best air-to-air 747 videos 

In fact, when the sponsor of the 747 Pan American World Airways’ President Juan Trippe took delivery of the jumbo, he said we are in a race between the 747 and the ICBM (Intercontinental Ballistic Missile) and he said I believe the 747 will win.

When the jumbo was introduced 50 years ago the airfare from Australia to London and return was the equivalent of 24 weeks average weekly earnings for an Australian.

By 1990 it was about five weeks average weekly earnings and by 2000 two weeks. Today it is below one week’s earnings.

The jumbo was a mass travel dream of Trippe and Boeing’s chief Bill Allen.

Trippe had started mass travel in 1948 when he introduced economy class onto 70 seat DC-4s.

But the 747 was far, far bigger. It would carry over 350 – almost double the Boeing 707 – and would slash fares.

The secret was the new high bypass engines that could produce over twice the thrust of the existing engines could do it at the time.

At the time the most powerful engine on the 189-seat Boeing 707 or Douglas DC-8 produced 19,000lbs of thrust, whereas the 366-seat 747-100’s engines would produce 43,500lbs of thrust.

But that was only part of the story with fuel economy the big-ticket.

The 747-100 used 33 per cent less fuel than the Boeing 707-320C it would replace.

However, that was just the start.

When Boeing first delivered the jumbo economy class was in a very generous layout of 2-4-3 with up to 10cm more legroom that today.

Many 747s had piano bars for economy passengers and an upstairs lounge for first class.

Sir Freddie Laker with his “no-frills” Skytrain DC-10 jumbo flights was to change all that.

He slashed fares by two-thirds across the North Atlantic in 1977 and he had applied to fly to Australia and Hong Kong.

Airlines responded by cramming more passengers into their 747s and DC-10s to cut fares.

That move spawned both business class and then later premium economy classes as airlines sought to cater for all pockets and desires for space.

But for the jumbo, the same engine technology that would enable it to dominate the world’s air routes was also going to be its undoing.

As engines became more fuel-efficient and reliable it enabled aircraft manufacturers to develop aircraft like the 365-seat Boeing 777 and the 300-seat Airbus A330 which slashed fuel used per passenger dramatically.

And they were much easier to fill than a 747.

Compared to the first jumbo, the Boeing 777-300ER cut the fuel burnt per passengers by about 35 per cent, while the Boeing 787-9 is almost 50 per cent more fuel-efficient per passenger.

And the new Boeings and Airbus A350 can fly much further than a 747.

The post How the 747 made travel affordable for all appeared first on Airline Ratings.

Fifty years ago the first passengers boarded a Pan Am 747 to fly from New York to London.

But its first passenger service got off to rocky start with engine problems and was delayed by six hours and a substitute 747 used. 

Here is the arrival in London.

The birth of the 747 was also rocky and was to bring dark clouds to the leaders in commercial aviation at the time and almost bankrupted all three.

READ Boeing about to fly its 777X

Ironically, the 747 wasn’t supposed to carry passengers for very many years as the world looked to supersonic travel with the Boeing SST and the Concorde.

Boeing has now sold 1,568 747s and it’s still in production with the latest model still turning heads.

Giving life to the aircraft that changed the world was a challenge that brought the world’s largest aerospace company, Boeing, the then biggest engine builder Pratt, and Whitney and the legendary Pan Am to their knees.

READ: How the 747 made travel affordable for all.

In the late 60s, Boeing’s resources were stretched to the absolute limit as its engineers grappled with the complexities of its US government-sponsored 2707 supersonic transport, which was eventually scrapped by Congress on May 20, 1971, despite commitments for 115 from 25 airlines.

At the time the 747 was considered only an interim solution before the world’s air routes were taken over by supersonics but fortunately, Boeing had appointed Joe Sutter, a brilliant young designer, to the project and he was to father the classic of the jet age.

Mr. Sutter was extremely modest on this role.

“I was the only qualified person available. All the smart guys, Maynard Pennell, Bill Cook, Bob Withington, and many others were tied up on the SST, while Jack Steiner was heading the 737 programs,” Mr. Sutter said in a 2009 interview with the author.

The 747 was designed at the outset to be a freighter as everyone thought the 747 would be relegated to cargo routes.

“That’s what Boeing’s marketing people thought; they estimated we’d probably sell 50 or so 747s for passenger use,” said Mr. Sutter.

The 747 was a mass travel dream of Pan American World Airways founder Juan Trippe and Boeing chief Bill Allen.

Mr Trippe had started mass travel in 1948 when he introduced economy class onto 70 seat DC-4s.

But the 747 was far, far bigger. It would carry over 350 – almost double the Boeing 707 – and would slash fares.

It is impossible to find anyone who recalls if there was a definitive business plan for the 747. But traffic was booming for the airline industry which had enjoyed growth of 15 percent a year through the early 1960s as passengers flocked to jet aircraft.

Mr. Trippe was a man on a mission.

He wanted to make travel affordable for everyone and he believed that the 747 with the new high bypass turbofan engine could do just that.

Pan Am ordered 25 but most airlines were terrified of the jumbo’s size. Qantas ordered 4, British Airways 6, while many airlines just ordered 2 or 3 just to stay in the jumbo race.

However, the trickle of orders wasn’t the major problem it was the 747’s weight.

Initially, it was to weigh 250,000kg but this leaped to 322,000kgs by the time it flew because of design changes impacting range, altitude, speed, and fuel burn. A solution, to run the engines at higher temperatures to give more thrust, was found and within six months of entering service, the jumbo was performing at acceptable levels.

Despite the many problems encountered in its manufacture, the birth of the 747 was an amazing feat. Pan Am took delivery of its first aircraft just 3-and-a-half years after its order was placed and that included a 10-month flight-test program.

Because the 747 was so big airlines splashed out with lounges. There was the upper deck lounge and many had lounges at the back of economy class. However a Boeing proposal for a lower deck lounge – called the Tiger Lounge, because of the fabric design used in the mock-up never made it.

The spacious age, however, was short-lived with airlines responding to a demand for cheaper and cheaper travel in the late 1970s by adding more seats.

There have been many variants of the superjet. The upper deck was stretched for the -300 model and a modified wing and bigger engines added for the longer range -400 version.

The 747 was also shrunk for the SP (Special Performance) model that was the first aircraft to be able to cross the South Pacific from the US to Australia non-stop.

Finally, the 747 itself was stretched to create the 747-8, which features wing changes and 787 engines.

Today the 747 is still the Queen of the Skies to many and for billions of passengers, it is the plane that enabled them to see the world.

The post The plane every passenger loves, the 747, turns 50 appeared first on Airline Ratings.

These are of the freighter model which has the original “hump”, not the extended one which seats passengers.

The upper deck of the Boeing 747 has been stretched twice – one on the -300/400 and then again on the -8 Intercontinental.

READ and SEE of our 747 50th coverage.

We have added a fifth video of the 747-8I’s first flight at the end of this story just for comparison.

These testing videos cover, minimum up-stick to establish the slowest take-off speed, extreme braking to test the brakes, G Loading to test the wing strength and finally a duration test.

Enjoy!

The post Extreme Boeing 747 testing videos appeared first on Airline Ratings.

In the video below Jack takes us on a full tour of his custom LEGO 747 jumbo jet.

SEE our full coverage of the 747s 50th year.

This model has a full interior and functioning flaps. It weighs almost 100 lbs and is over 6 feet long. It has a wingspan of 5 feet.

The post Video of giant 747 made out of 20,000 lego bricks appeared first on Airline Ratings.

“It was an amazing opportunity from an aero modeler’s point of view: it was just the pinnacle of my experience with the hobby,” he told Perthnow.com.

SEE our video “Dispelling the myths about flying.” 

The “queen of the sky”, has always held a great fascination for Mr. Herzfeld.

“On many occasions, I have been overawed by the sheer size of the aircraft and how it is possible for 360 tonnes of metal to be able to fly,” he told PerthNow’s Peta Rasdien.

READ Air Niugini 737 overshoots runway and lands in the ocean. 

“To be able to place my model alongside the real deal and have the opportunity to show my model to the crew of the Qantas 747 was an amazing experience.”

The model is 5.6m long, 5.2m wide and weighs 65kg.

Mr Herzfeld is also president of WA’s model jet aircraft association Westjet.

“It was quite an amazing opportunity for me as an aero modeler to have this one put up alongside the full-sized one and actually let the captains of that aircraft have a look at it and speak to them,” he said.

“I got a few photos with them and the model and I also got up into the cockpit of the full-sized one and had a bit of a seat in the captain’s seat.”

The mini jumbo is 1/12th the size of the real thing and slightly bigger than another built in Germany in 2015 that is 1/13th scale.

The post World’s largest 747 RC model meets the real thing appeared first on Airline Ratings.

The incredible DC-3 was the first plane that was able to make money just hauling passengers and freed airlines from restrictive mail contracts, while the 747 freed the world’s population to travel wherever they liked.

Bill Gates said that the 747 was “the world first world wide web” as is smashed barriers between people and countries.

In fact, when the sponsor of the 747 Pan American World Airways’ President Juan Trippe took delivery of the 747, he said we are in a race between the 747 and the ICBM (Intercontinental Ballistic Missile) and he said I believe the 747 will win.

When the 747 was introduced in 1970 the airfare from Australia to London and return was the equivalent of 24 weeks average weekly earnings for an Australian.

By 1990 it was about five weeks average weekly earnings and by 2000 two weeks. Today it is below one week’s earnings.

The 747 was a mass travel dream of Trippe and Boeing’s chief Bill Allen.

Trippe had started mass travel in 1948 when he introduced economy class onto 70 seat DC-4s.

But the 747 was far, far bigger. It would carry over 350 – almost double the Boeing 707 – and would slash fares.

The secret was the new high bypass engines that could produce over twice the thrust of the existing engines could do it at the time.

At the time the most powerful engine on the 189-seat Boeing 707 or Douglas DC-8 produced 19,000lbs of thrust, whereas the 366-seat 747-100’s engines would produce 43,500lbs of thrust.

But that was only part of the story with fuel economy the big ticket.

The 747-100 used 33 percent less fuel than the Boeing 707-320C it would replace.

However, that was just the start.

When Boeing first delivered the 747, economy class was in a generous configuration of 2-4-3 with up to 10cm more legroom that today.

Sir Freddie Laker with his “no frills” Skytrain DC-10 jumbo flights were to change all that.

He slashed fares by two-thirds across the North Atlantic in 1977 and he had applied to fly to Australia and Hong Kong.

Airlines responded by cramming more passengers into their 747s and DC-10s to cut fares.

That move spawned both business class and then later premium economy classes as airlines sought to cater for all pockets and desires for space.

But for the 747, the same engine technology that would enable it to dominate the world’s air routes was also going to be its undoing.

As engines became more fuel efficient and reliable it enabled aircraft manufacturers to develop aircraft like the 365-seat Boeing 777 and the 300-seat Airbus A330 which slashed fuel used per passenger dramatically.

And they were much easier to fill than a 747.

Compared to the first 747, the Boeing 777-300ER cut the fuel burnt per passengers by about 35 percent, while the Boeing 787-9 is almost 50 percent more fuel efficient per passenger.

And the new Boeings and Airbus A350 can fly much further than a 747.

The post How the Boeing 747 slashed airfares to make air travel affordable for all appeared first on Airline Ratings.

Sutter led the team behind the company’s iconic Boeing 747, known affectionately as the “jumbo jet’’, and was responsible for pushing the boundaries of 1960s aerospace technology.

A native of Boeing’s birthplace, the US city of Seattle, and the son of a Slovenian immigrant, Sutter was born in 1921 and grew up on a hilltop overlooking the manufacturer’s plant.

“My friends all wanted to fly airplanes but I set my heart on designing them,’’ Sutter said in his book “747’’. “The futuristic flying machines I sketched as a boy would carry passengers in safety and comfort to the far continents, conquering oceans in a single flight. Little did I know I would grow up to realize these dreams.’’

READ Jumbo’s crazy and not so crazy interiors. 

A graduate of the University of Washington, Sutter started at the Boeing plant after serving in the US in Navy World War II and was courted by both Boeing and the Douglas Aircraft Company after the end of the war.

He initially accepted the higher Douglas offer but took what he thought was a short-term job with Boeing while his wife delivered the couple’s first child.

That job with Boeing’s small aerodynamic group working on the piston-powered Stratocruiser would be the start of a long and illustrious career that would see him work on many of the airline’s early jets.

“He personified the ingenuity and passion for excellence that made Boeing airplanes synonymous with quality the world over,’’ then Boeing Commercial Airplanes President Ray Conner said in a tribute sent when Sutter died in 2016.

“Early in Joe’s career, he had a hand in many iconic commercial airplane projects, including the Dash 80, its cousin the 707 and the 737.  But it was the 747 – the world’s first jumbo jet – that secured his place in history.

Joe led the engineering team that developed the 747 in the mid-1960s, opening up affordable international travel and helping connect the world.

“His team, along with thousands of other Boeing employees involved in the project, became known as the Incredibles for producing what was then the world’s largest airplane in record time – 29 months from conception to rollout.

It remains a staggering achievement and a testament to Joe’s “incredible” determination.”

At the time Sutter was designing what would become the jumbo jet,  the world was looking to supersonic travel with the Boeing SST and the Concorde as the future in aviation.

Giving life to the plane that changed the world was a challenge that brought Boeing, the world’s biggest aerospace company, the then-biggest engine maker Pratt and Whitney and the legendary Pan Am to their knees.

And while the speed with which the 747 was rolled out may be the stuff of legends, it was the one thing Sutter would have like to have changed,

He speculated the timetable was because of the closeness to the retirement of two legendary aviation figures: Pan-Am’s Juan Trippe and Boeing’s Bill Allen.

The two wanted the 747 completed in two-thirds the time ordinarily taken to develop an all-new jet and delivered by the end of 1969.

This put Sutter’s group under tremendous pressure but they rose to the challenge.

“In all my years at Boeing, I’ve never met a gang that pulled together as well as my 747 team,’’ he later recalled.

“We seemed to have the same can-do attitude that was even then putting Americans on the  moon.”

Not that the journey was without turbulence.

Pan-Am had originally asked for a double-decker plane but it’s management eventually accepted, after some persuasion, what was essentially a single deck plane whose cabin was twice as wide as any airliner that had ever flown.

Engines were also a problem for the 747 and Sutter was forced to head off lobbying for an unsuitable General Electric engine in favor of a more suitable powerplant from Pratt & Whitney.

Pratt’s JT9D engine was its first attempt at a high-bypass-ratio turbofan engine and was not without problems that included engine failures and surges.

There were also issues with the wing loading, eventually solved by twisting outer wings in what became known as the Sutter twist.

And the aircraft’s gross weight had also blown out from 550,000lbs to 680,000lbs before the 747s take-off weight was eventually redefined at  710,000lbs.

When the first 747, R A0001,  rolled out on a cold and overcast day in September 1968, it made global news and the crowd attending the vent gasped audibly and broke out in spontaneous applause.

“More important,” Sutter said in his book. “A  whole lot of bankers felt vastly relieved to see in the papers and on TV that Boeing had a real airplane to show for all that money we’d borrowed from them.

“In fact, this was the entire point of the rollout, which otherwise decidedly premature. Oh, our jumbo jet might have looked ready to leap into the sky but in reality, it was only 78 percent finished.’’

Boeing had wanted the aircraft to fly on December 17, 1968, to make the 65^th birthday of the Wright brothers’ flight at Kitty Hawk in North Carolina.

That first flight would come on February 9, 1969, and Sutter described his quiet elation on the day.

“I saw Boeing’s new jet as 75,000 drawings, 4.5 million parts, 136 miles of electric wiring, five landing gear legs, four hydraulic systems and 10 million labor hours,’’ he recalled.

“In a few moments now, on an airfield 30 miles north of where I grew up dreaming of designing airplanes, we’d see whether all those pieces added up to a real flying machine.’’

As the plane took to the skies and performed a shallow turn, Sutter found himself unable to say anything.

Despite reassurances the plane was “flying beautifully’, it was not until it descended to the runway “with the stately majesty of an ocean liner”, flared gently and touched down smoothly that Sutter relaxed.

“That moment was the biggest thrill of the day,” he said. “All my worries evaporated and I knew we had a good airplane. I took a grateful breath, happy to  the core of my being.”

Throughout all this, one thing Sutter was never prepared to compromise was safety.

Innovations included a decision to take redundancy on the 747 to new levels with arrangements such as four separate and independent hydraulic systems.

The most comprehensive certification program performed to that time kept five 747 test aircraft flying seven days a week over 10 months of flight testing.

“My team and I would be introducing the biggest airplane in the world,’’ Sutter said in his book. “Here was also our chance to make it the safest.’’

The jumbo jet would become the Queen of the Skies, selling more than 1500 units and still in production today.

Sutter was always was modest about his role. “I was the only qualified person available,” he said in a 2009 interview with AirlineRatings. “All the smart guys — Maynard Pennell, Bill Cook, Bob Withington, and many others — were tied up on the SST while Jack Steiner was heading the 737 program.”

The 747 was from the outset designed to be converted to a freighter as the superseded model was relegated to cargo routes. “That’s what Boeing’s marketing people thought,” Sutter said. “They estimated we’d probably sell 50 or so for passenger use.”

Sutter remained active with Boeing long after his retirement and continued to serve as a consultant as well as an ambassador for the company.

“By then his hair was white and he moved a little slower, but he always had a twinkle in his eye, a sharp mind and an unwavering devotion to aerospace innovation and The Boeing Company,’’ Conner said in his tribute.

The post Safety top priority for father of the jumbo appeared first on Airline Ratings.

Boeing in the 1960s did not have a factory big enough to house its new jumbo jet so a search began for a suitable site to build what would turn out to be the mother of aircraft plants.

A key factor was an airport with a long runway capable of handling the new plane and three potential sites were evaluated while the 747 was still in the early design phase.

One was Snohomish County Airport, a former military base better known as Paine Field and located 30 miles north of Seattle near what was then the sleepy lumber town of Everett.

A second was past Tacoma, 32 miles southwest of Seattle, at a site adjacent to McChord Air Force base.

READ: Singapore Airlines takes delivery of New York nonstop A350.

The third was at Walnut Creek, California, in the East Bay region of the San Francisco area.

Boeing had recently lost the C-5 program to Lockheed and the thinking was that siting the factory in California could offset the political advantages of competitors.

Supporters of the Walnut Creek site pointed to the fact that Douglas, North American Rockwell, General Dynamics, Northrop, and many other aerospace firms were based in California.

“Some very senior Boeing people were pushing very hard to site our 747 factory there to benefit from that state’s greater political clout in Washington, DC,’’ Boeing engineer Joe Sutter said in his book “747”.

Sutter argued against the California site on logistical and cost grounds when asked his opinion at a committee meeting to discuss the site.

“Given this opening, I told ’em point-blank that I thought it would be an unmitigated disaster,” Sutter wrote.  “If 747 production were sent down there, communications would slow, coordination would suffer, costs would rise, our overall logistical challenges would increase, and there was no way in hell that we would meet our schedule commitments to Pan-Am.”

Sutter’s view provoked an angry reaction from the Walnut Creek supporters but to his immense, relief Boeing decided at the start of 1966 to build its new plant at Everett.

It would prove, he recalled, a herculean task which required more soil to be removed from the 700-acre site than was shifted for the Panama Canal and Washington states Grand Coulee Dam combined.

The $US200 million project involved 2500 construction workers toiling in endless rain and mud to erect the 200 million cubic foot  (5.66m cubic meter) building.

An engineering feat in its own right, the building’s immense size  — it is the world’s biggest in terms volume — made it a landmark and a major tourist attraction for the region.

“So big was it that Boeing workers would sometimes see clouds forming inside it,’’ Sutter said.

The factory would be enlarged to accommodate production of the 767 in 1980 with one extra production hall and was expanded again in 1993 with two additional halls to build the 777.

Today, the world’s biggest building by volume encloses  472 million cubic feet of space over 98.3 acres and you could fit 911 basketball courts inside.

At almost two-thirds of a mile (more than 1km) long and a third of a mile wide, employees often use bicycles to get between jobs.

The massive production facility has six doors, each the size of an American football field and a giant canvas for artwork depicting the company’s planes.

Twenty-six  26 overhead cranes cruise on 72 kilometers of networked tracks and these make 45,000 lifts a month to support the building of approximately 20 planes a month.

Yet the main assembly building is just part of a massive industrial complex that includes three huge paint hangars, sprawling flight lines, a plane delivery center that is as big as an airport terminal, office blocks and a new wing assembly plant.

The Everett campus is the workplace for 30,000 people, produces 25,000 meals a day from 20 cafeterias and its area is bigger than Disneyland — with 12 acres of parking left over.

In many ways, it is indeed a magic kingdom where the world’s largest aerospace company Boeing has produced about  5000 widebody planes – the 747, 767, 777 and 787 since 1968.

It is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Washington State. Boeing started tours of the factory when it was building the first 747 and since then more than 3.5 million people have seen the facility.

The  Everett campus is now building the company’s newest plane, the Boeing 777X, a revamp of the widely used 777.  A plant to build the 777X’s composite wings increases the factory floor space on the campus a further 25 percent.

Read tomorrow “Safety was a top priority for the father of the 747.”

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