Big Bird’s first flight – 50 years on

On February 9, it will be 50 years since the first Boeing ‘Jumbo’ straddled the international skies. 

The Boeing 747, dubbed the ‘Super Jet’ or ‘Jumbo Jet’ because of its huge size, took to the skies for the first time on February 9, 1969.The Boeing team made aviation history by building the 747 — the largest civilian airplane in the world — in less than 16 months during the late 1960s at its Everett, Washington plant in the United States.On September 30, 1968 the giant jet rolled out of Boeing’s Everett plant, which still remains the world’s largest building!In November 2005, Boeing launched the 747-8 family — the 747-8 intercontinental passenger airplane and the 747-8 Freighter. These airplanes incorporate innovative technologies from the 787 Dreamliner.Fifty years on, the 747 fleet has logged more than 121.5bn kilometres, equivalent to 137,293 trips from the Earth to the Moon and back (assuming a distance of 207,600 nautical miles to the Moon).The 747 fleet has flown more than 5.9bn people — the equivalent of 78% of the world’s population, according to Boeing Commercial Airplanes. Apart from transporting goods from one end of the world to the other, the ‘Big Bird’ has transported all kinds of fliers including American Presidents!On June 28, 2014, Boeing delivered the 1,500th 747 to come off the production line to Germany’s Lufthansa.The incentive for creating the giant 747, Boeing says came from reductions in airfares, a surge in air-passenger traffic and increasingly crowded skies. But skeptics say large aircraft are not ideally suited for short-haul flights. Also, they argue that because of technological breakthroughs, smaller two-engined aircraft are now able to fly much further; and because they only need two engines, they are cheaper for the airlines to run, so destinations are becoming more varied.It means non-stop long-haul flights from places such as London to Nashville – a distance of more than 6,700km are now possible on twin-engine planes.Following the loss of the competition for a gigantic military transport, the C-5A, Boeing, which is the world’s largest aerospace company, set out to develop a large advanced commercial airplane to take advantage of the high-bypass engine technology developed for the C-5A. The design philosophy behind the 747 was to develop a completely new plane, and other than the engines, the designers purposefully avoided using any hardware developed for the C-5.The 747's final design was offered in three configurations- all passenger, all cargo and a convertible passenger/freighter model. The freighter and convertible models loaded 8- by 8-foot (2.4- by 2.4-meter) cargo containers through the huge hinged nose.The 747 was truly monumental in size. The massive airplane required construction of the 200mn-cubic-foot (5.6mn-cubic-metre) 747 assembly plant in Everett, Washington, the world's largest building (by volume). The fuselage of the original 747 was 225 feet (68.5 meters) long; the tail as tall as a six-story building.“To those who have loved the plane through the years, she is the ‘Queen of the Skies’, points out Michael Lombardi, senior corporate historian at Boeing.“The Queen was created by the men and women of Boeing, from brilliant engineers to highly skilled machinists and they worked long hours to make real something that the world said could not be done,” Lombardi noted.According to Boeing, the 747 was also born from “great leadership”, especially Joe Sutter who headed the design team and has since been known as the “Father of the 747.”It all started when William Allen, the then Boeing CEO took a courageous decision to take the great financial risk, to “bet the company,” on a plane that many said would not fly both literally and financially. It was also his friendship with Juan Trippe, Pan American Airways legendary leader that formed the catalyst for the launch of the 747, Lombardi says.The partnership of Boeing and Pan Am ushered in the jet age on August 15, 1958, when Pan Am took delivery of the United States' first commercial jet airliner, a Boeing 707-120.As a result, air travel began to grow, and by the early 1960s the gates at major airports were reaching capacity and Trippe began searching for a bigger airplane. According to Lombardi, Trippe and Allen made a “if you buy it, we will build it” agreement to build an airplane that would be twice the size of the 707 and with that the 747 programme was launched with a formal agreement in April, 1966. The airplane introduced a number of technological and aviation firsts, the highlight being the invention of the twin aisle wide body design. It also marked the first commercial use of the high bypass turbofan engine. By July 1970, one million passengers had flown on the 747 – the ‘Super Jet’ that literally shrank the world.The 747 has a sort of “iconic status” among plane spotters and according to Lombardi, it was the first airplane with two aisles.Most of those who fly still may not know what airplane they are on, but the 747’s sheer size and its distinctive hump certainly make the plane readily recognisable!