Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Rise and Fall of the Boeing 747

Starting point is 00:00:00 Introduced in 1968, the Boeing 747 totally revolutionized commercial air transportation. It was more than twice the size of the next closest passenger plane, and it brought air travel to a much wider audience. Not only did it help democratize air travel, but the plane's unique features also added a new element of style and luxury to the jet age. And in addition to carrying passengers, it's also served as an important cargo aircraft, and it's even served as Air Force One. Learn more about the Boeing 747 on the 747th episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong? ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night.

Starting point is 00:01:00 And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThruLine podcast from NPR. are. Today, air travel is relatively affordable, and it's something that is within the grasp of most people. Even if it doesn't seem like it, air travel today is much cheaper and much more democratic than it was in the 50s and 60s. Back then, flying by air was relatively expensive, which is why so few people did it. The people who did travel by air became known as the jet set, which became a euphemism for the wealthy and the beautiful. However, the jet set is something you almost never hear about anymore, because everyone is now part of the jet set.

Starting point is 00:01:41 Airlines like Ryanair, Southwest, Spirit, EasyJet, and a host of other airlines have made air travel available for everyone. One of the first major steps in that transition of democratizing travel was the development of the 747. The origins of the 747 actually began with a government contract for a large military cargo aircraft. In 1963, the United States Air Force put out a request to aircraft manufacturers for a cargo jet that would be larger than the C-141 Starlifter. The new project was called the CX heavy logistic system, and the Air Force required that the plane have a capacity of 180,000 pounds, a top speed of Mach.0.75, and a range of 5,000 miles or 9,000 kilometers. There were also requirements for the size of the payload bay, and the plane had to be able to be

Starting point is 00:02:28 loaded from doors in both the front and the rear. The Air Force also requested that the number of engines on the plane be limited to four. In addition to designing a whole new type of plane, this would also require a whole new type of engine. In the end, Boeing did not get the contract. It was awarded to Lockheed, and the cargo aircraft became the C-5 Galaxy, which is still in service today. But Boeing didn't let the work they did on the CX heavy logistics system go to waste. Even before the Air Force cargo plane contract, Boeing had been approached by the president of Pan Am Airlines, Juan Tripp, to create a passenger aircraft that would be 2.5 times larger than the current Boeing 707 and DC-8, which were the most commonly used passenger jets of the era.

Starting point is 00:03:10 The 707 could, depending on the configuration, carry about 140 passengers, and the DC8 could seat about 189. Tripp thought that a larger aircraft could relieve the airport congestion caused by so many smaller planes, as well as be more cost-effective for the airlines. Boeing took many of the ideas from their CX heavy logistics system bid and put it into this new aircraft, which had been given the model number 747. The initial plan was to put in two totally separate levels for passengers. This idea was ultimately scrapped because of the difficulty in implementing the legal requirement whereby all passengers had to be able to exit the aircraft within 90 seconds.

Starting point is 00:03:50 The double-decker concept was scrapped not only because of the safety issue, but because it would make it difficult to use as a cargo aircraft. Instead, they went with a single passenger deck with a wider body. The requirement to put a hinge on the nose of the aircraft to allow for front-loading from the original Air Force bid was something that Boeing still wanted to pursue. So they put the cockpit above the passenger area just behind where the hinge would be on a cargo version of the plane. This is why the 747 has a distinctive hump near the front of the plane. Despite Pan Am's request for a larger passenger jet, the management at Boeing didn't think the

Starting point is 00:04:26 747 was going to be used for passenger flight for very long, because everyone assumed in the late 1960s that the future of passenger air travel was going to be supersonic aircraft. Hence, they thought most passenger 747s would probably be converted to cargo aircraft eventually, so they had to plan for it. The first version of the 747 was the 747 100. If configured for one seating class, it could fit 539 passengers. It had a wingspan of almost 60 meters or 197 feet. The top of the tail stood at 22.2 meters or almost 73 feet, and the length of the fuselage was about 70.6 meters or 231 feet. It could take off with a maximum of 340,000 kilograms or 750,000 pounds. Fly at 991 kilometers per hour, or 616 miles per hour,

Starting point is 00:05:18 and it had a maximum range of 9,000 kilometers or 5,600 miles. By every measure I just listed, it was the largest passenger aircraft in the world by a wide margin. To lift all this, it required brand new engines. These would be the new JT-9D high-bypass turbofan engines designed and built by Pratt and Whitney. These were the first high-bypass jets used in commercial aviation, and they were radically more fuel efficient than anything which had come before. Pan Am, the airline that originally suggested the plane, had been involved in the entire design process. In 1966, they signed a contract for 25-747-100 aircraft. at a cost of $525 million, which would be worth over $4.8 billion today.

Starting point is 00:06:07 With a customer lined up and with a design in hand, the next big problem was, where do you build such a huge aircraft? And the answer was to construct the largest building in the world by volume, the Boeing factory in Everett, Washington. Construction of the first 747 required a whole new set of techniques that had never been used before. They had to develop a mock of the cockpit at the correct height to let pilots practice taxiing because most pilots had never had to taxi something this large before. It was called Waddles Wagon after the Boeing test pilot who suggested it.

Starting point is 00:06:39 They had to create a full-scale mock-up of the plane to test evacuations. And they had to do much of the construction of the prototype while the Everett factory was being built, which meant working on the plane even before the roof was finished. The engines proved to be a problem, as the development of the body of the plane outpaced the engine construction. Some of the early prototypes had to have piles of bricks hanging from the wings to simulate the weight of the engines. Finally, however, everything was in place to show the prototype to the world. On September 30th, 1968, the public and the media were shown the 747. Up to this point, Boeing had spent a billion dollars on the development of the plane, which is the equivalent of

Starting point is 00:07:18 8.5 billion today. On the plus side, by the time the prototype was shown to the public, 26 airlines had placed 747s on order. Over 50,000 Boeing employees were involved in the design and construction of the 747. The first test flight took place on February 9, 1969, other than some minor problems with the flaps, everything went well. The biggest problems in the test stage were still with the Pratt and Whitney engines. The 747 was shown to the public for the first time at the 1969 Paris Air Show, and it finally received its FAA flight-worthy certificate into 740.4. of 1969. When the final kinks were worked out, the first 747s were delivered to Pan Am in January of

Starting point is 00:08:00 1970. The first aircraft, the clipper of Victor, was christened on January 15th by the First Lady Pat Nixon, and the first commercial flight took place one week later, flying from New York to London. Before I mentioned the iconic bubble on the top of the 747. When the first 747s were delivered, no one was really sure what to do with them, so the first planes actually used them as a lounge for first-class passengers. Quantus called their lounge the Captain Cook Lounge. Some airlines had tables where you could sit and talk to passengers. United had a cocktail bar, and American Airlines even had a piano in their lounge. These lounges didn't really last very long because most airlines realized that they could make more money by just adding more seats in the bubble.

Starting point is 00:08:44 On a personal note, I once sat in the bubble of a Singapore Air 747 on a flight from Taipei to Singapore about 20 years ago, and I still remember it. Given the hundreds of flights of I've taken around the world. The fact that I can still remember that flight really says something about flying in the bubble. Many of the first 747s were sold to national flag carriers, as the plane became an instant status symbol. However, most of these national airlines were huge money losers, so they didn't care too much about profitability. The recession from 1969 to 1970 was a huge shock to Boeing. From September 1970 to March 1972, they only sold two 747s worldwide. The oil embargo of 1973 caused many 747 owners to sell their planes for smaller ones,

Starting point is 00:09:28 and many of the 747s were converted to cargo aircraft, which is exactly what Boeing originally predicted what happened. Eventually, the oil embargo was lifted and demand picked up again. One of the major events which gave the plane a new lease on life was the deregulation of the airline industry in the United States. This resulted in a massive reduction in ticket prices and a correspondingly large increase in the number of passengers. New versions of the 747 were released every few years. The 747-200 was released in 1971, the 300 in 1980, the 400 in 1985, and the dash 8 in 2005. Over the years, the 747 has also used engines by General Electric and Rolls-Royce, and there were also minor models which were developed in between the major versions. The 1,000th, 747 was delivered

Starting point is 00:10:18 in 1993, and the 1,500th was delivered to Luftanzah in 2014. In 2008, the 747 lost its title as the largest passenger aircraft when Airbus introduced the A380. However, both the 747 and the A380 saw a declining interest from airlines. Smaller aircraft saw bigger improvements in fuel efficiency and the distance they could travel. For example, the latest version of the 747 can fly 30% farther than the first version. However, the latest version of the 737 can now fly 75% farther than it could originally.

Starting point is 00:10:55 The number of smaller planes which can make transatlantic crossings has grown considerably since the launch of the 747. And four-engine aircraft like the 747 just can't economically compete with new two-engine aircraft like the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. As a result of Saking demand, the Boeing Corporation announced in 2020 that they were going to end construction of the 747 aircraft. The current 747-8s that had been ordered would be completed, but they would be the last ones. And all of the final 747s are for cargo use. The final 747 is scheduled to be delivered in October of 2022. Given how long 747s can remain in operation, it'll probably be a few decades before the last 747 ceases operation. I'll end with one of the most significant and tragic days in the history of the 747 and in all of aviation.

Starting point is 00:11:47 On March 27, 1977, two 747s collided on the runway in Tenerife, Spain, on the Canary Islands. KLM Flight 4805, with 248 occupants, was accelerating down the runway for takeoff, while Pan Am Flight 1736 was still on the runway with its 396 occupants. The Pan Am aircraft happened to be the Clipper Victor, the very first 747 to fly in a commercial flight. There was a dense fog on the runway, so the KLFACP. The KLM pilot couldn't see the other plane. Moreover, there was a miscommunication with the control tower, and the KLM pilot thought that he had permission to take off. The colliding planes resulted in 583 deaths. It was, and still remains, the worst accident in aviation

Starting point is 00:12:33 history. The subsequent investigation found that the accident was due to pilot error, and it resulted in substantial reforms in how pilots and flight controllers communicate. Nonetheless, the involvement of two 747s, the largest passenger air, aircraft in the world at that time, resulted in what was perhaps the worst accident that could even be possible. While the Boeing 747 has now been phased out, it had a run of over 50 years of being the most iconic commercial aircraft in the world. While we might not see many of its distinctive bubble tops at airports anymore, it still has a place in aviation history for introducing the world to wide-body aircraft and long-distance passenger aviation.

Starting point is 00:13:16 Everything Everywhere Daily is an Airwave Media podcast. The executive producer, is Darcy Adams. The associate producers are Thornton and Peter Bennett. I just wanted to extend a big thank you to everyone who is supporting the show over at patreon.com. I have show merchandise available there, including hoodies, t-shirts, and stickers. Plus, it really just helps me get this show out every single day, including, of course,

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Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The Rise and Fall of the Boeing 747

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