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Boeing's Last 747 Rolls Out of the Factory After More Than 50-Year Production Run (cnbc.com) 122

Posted by msmash from the what-a-run dept.
Boeing's final 747 rolled out of the company's cavernous factory north of Seattle Tuesday night as airlines' push for more fuel-efficient planes ends the more than half-century production run of the jumbo jet. From a report: The 1,574th -- and last -- 747 will later be flown by a Boeing test pilot, painted and handed over to cargo and charter carrier Atlas Air Worldwide Holdings early next year.

"It's a very surreal time, obviously," said Kim Smith, vice president and general manager of Boeing's 747 and 767s programs out of the assembly plant here. "For the first time in well over 50 years we will not have a 747 in this facility."
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Boeing's Last 747 Rolls Out of the Factory After More Than 50-Year Production Run More

Boeing's Last 747 Rolls Out of the Factory After More Than 50-Year Production Run

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  • Live long and prosper, old friend (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @12:17PM (#63110550) Journal

    In the era of throw-it-out-and-start-over software frameworks and fads, I feel happy to celebrate something that lived long and prospered on incremental improvements.

    • Re:Live long and prosper, old friend (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Type44Q ( 1233630 ) on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @01:11PM (#63110732)
      I spent a good chunk of my childhood on those things; almost exclusively Pan Am and Northwest Orient flights. The pilots were always chill as fuck, exclusively ex-military flyers (lots of carrier aviators; you couldn't phase those guys). The flight attendants were gracious and as lovely as Penthouse Pets. I remember getting onboard in Rome with a backpack full of replica medieval weapons that'd I bought in San Marino - the flight attendant hand to run and grab the captain; he looked at my knives, morning star and crossbow and interrogated me at length as to how he could find the place so he could buy his own. Then there was the time we climbed aboard a Tokyo-bound flight in New York with a half-dozen large boxes of Krispy Kremes we'd picked up in Ohio; it was the last thing our flight attendant, who was from Atlanta, expected to see. There were lots of Krispy Kremes being enjoyed for the first time in First Class that day. Of course, we had to give a box to her and the other attendants to enjoy. When you got onboard as a child, the flight crew would insist on taking you up to cockpit and giving you a tour. If you were a kid flying alone - holy shit, they parked you up in First Class where they could keep an eye on you (even if you were flying economy) and made sure you wanted for nothing. I remember multiple occasions when I'd have the upper deck all to myself, playing my assortment of Nintendo handhelds. The inflight entertainment often seemed to consist of Bond films, which certainly contributed to the mystique of international travel...
      • Yup. My dad was that ex military type pilot and I would get to sit in the jump seat on the DC10 while my dad was copilot. You will be surprised but my wife is a manager for Boeing and now based in Everett plant. We got to see the inside of this very 747 though it is stripped. It was sad listening to some of the other employees talking about this.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Tablizer ( 95088 )

        > I remember getting onboard in Rome with a backpack full of replica medieval weapons that'd I bought in San Marino - the flight attendant hand to run and grab the captain; he looked at my knives, morning star and crossbow and interrogated me at length as to how he could find the place so he could buy his own.

        Chuckles. I wonder how you got past security screening. Was this several decades ago? Imagine the facial expression of a security screener seeing that backpack on the X-Ray machine today. They'd hav

    • Yes. Unfortunate how Boeing (and the FAA) has been hijacked by the new "move fast and break things" mentality.

  • I'm old (Score:3)

    by KlomDark ( 6370 ) on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @12:22PM (#63110564) Homepage Journal

    I remember a friend in first grade, whose dad worked for Boeing, bringing a pre-release marketing flier for the original 747 to school way back then. Was super cool to little me, and now they are no more. Strange!

    • What is strange about old products being obsoleted and replaced by something newer? The 747 ceased being useful as an airframe. The world changes, it would be more strange to keep producing something that no one wants to buy (especially since they are built to order).

      • The airframe is fine. It is 4 engines that is not.

        • As with crash problems recently on a different plane, engines are tied together with plane designs for them.

          I guess there is no reasonable engine upgrade that would work with that plane.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

            The 747 has gotten a bunch of engine upgrades. The most recent was in 2011, when it got 787 engines and avionics.

            The problem is, it's too big. It's hard to route around big planes flying a route a couple times a day, and since twin engine jets have been certified to fly pretty much anywhere, the 747s have lost their protected routes.

        • The airframe is fine. It is 4 engines that is not.

          An airframe is only fine if it fits the needs of what is attached. Is there a reason why they didn't just put different engines on it? Yes there is. Ergo, the airframe is not fine which is why it is being retired rather than modified.

        • And to follow up my other post, no the airframe isn't fine even if it had more suitable engines. There's no market demand for that airframe due to how the movements of passengers and cargo has changed, which is incidentally why the A380 (despite not having any problems with the size or efficiency of its engines) has also been discontinued.

      • Strange that this much time has passed already, ya goof.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by drhamad ( 868567 )
        The fact that there may be reasons it's now no longer made doesn't make it any less strange to see it gone after half a century (and more than most of our lives) in production.

  • Now that they have an empty factory, they can license the designs of the Ukrainian AN-225 from Antonov Airlines and build some of those useful beasts.

    • Now that they have an empty factory, they can license the designs of the Ukrainian AN-225 from Antonov Airlines and build some of those useful beasts.

      Curious what cargos would be too large for the C-5 Galaxy so we would need an AN-225 size aircraft? Having at least one that size does seem useful for rare transport requirements, though I wonder if just putting the cargo on a boat would suffice in most cases.

      That said... please build a new AN-225, that thing is amazing!

      • Sending the cargo on a ship (not a boat) takes considerably longer than flying it in, and sometimes the destination is either too far from the ocean or there's no roads or rails capable of carrying it from the nearest port to where it needs to be. Sometimes, the only way to get something to the right place at the right time is by air, so having a few huge cargo planes available is a good idea, and the rest of the time, they can be carrying lots of smaller loads.

        • Sending the cargo on a ship (not a boat) takes considerably longer than flying it in, and sometimes the destination is either too far from the ocean or there's no roads or rails capable of carrying it from the nearest port to where it needs to be. Sometimes, the only way to get something to the right place at the right time is by air, so having a few huge cargo planes available is a good idea, and the rest of the time, they can be carrying lots of smaller loads.

          No disagreement with your assessment, I just wonder if enough cargos that would have gone to the An-225 now go on ships, so not enough cargos actually _need_ the An-225 to be worth getting a new one back into the air. I hope it will be worthwhile enough they can complete the second airframe, or produce a new one.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by EvilSS ( 557649 )
        Problem with the C-5 is there are not civilian versions of it and the DoD isn't really into flying non-DoD related cargo around. Lockheed wanted to make one, the L-500, but they couldn't generate enough interest to bother with it. The An-225 was available to fly civilian cargo that no other available cargo plane could. Ukraine says they are want to build a replacement for it. Hopefully that happens. I got to see it a few times as it made occasional trips to my local airport. Pretty damn cool watching it lan

        • Problem with the C-5 is there are not civilian versions of it and the DoD isn't really into flying non-DoD related cargo around. Lockheed wanted to make one, the L-500, but they couldn't generate enough interest to bother with it. The An-225 was available to fly civilian cargo that no other available cargo plane could. Ukraine says they are want to build a replacement for it. Hopefully that happens. I got to see it a few times as it made occasional trips to my local airport. Pretty damn cool watching it land/take off.

          Good point I had not considered, that the real needs may be civilian and the An-225 was the only option. I wonder if the An-225 is cost effective to operate, but not build a new one and operate. Hopefully we can find a way to get one back in the air.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by EvilSS ( 557649 )
            It seemed to stay pretty busy, so there is a market for one. But probably only, literally, one. But yea, building a one-off plane is not cheap as that one jet has to absorb all of the program costs. It may come down to how much of the original tooling is still around. Design is already there, and they were already making replacement parts so those exist.

            • Re: (Score:2)

              by pjt33 ( 739471 )

              Existed. They might have been destroyed by the same attack that destroyed the plane, because AIUI it was at its home base when it was destroyed.

              • Re: (Score:2)

                by EvilSS ( 557649 )
                They didn't nuke the location. Hell the An-225 wasn't even completely destroyed. So unless the plans were stored in the front of the plane, they are probably safe.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

        The AN-225 was designed to transport the Buran. More recently it did things like carry wind turbine blades, complete power station generators and locomotives.

        Apparently Ukraine is going to complete the second one, which was partially built.

    • I think that only one 225 being built says it all. If there was a huge demand for a leviathan-sized aircraft for cargo use they'd have already built quite a few of them. Even the 124s are cold war relics.

    • There's a lot wrong with that notion.

      First, the factory is not empty. Boeing uses their Everett factory for the 777, 767 and, except for the -10 variant, 787. Second, producing the the AN-225 would require all-new dies, tooling, factory layouts, and production training... then multiply that by all of the various subcontractors. Third, while I would hope that Boeing has gone metric internally by not, everything up to at least the 777 was decidedly imperial. And even if Boeing is metric, they quite likely

    • Nah. Bigger aircrafts out there and a great deal more efficient. The dreamlifter has bigger volume (monster since it holds 787 fuselage). That there is airbus equivalent as well. And add in stratolaunch, super guppy, etc.

      • The big difference between the An-225 and the Dreamlifter/Airbus ST is their payload.
        The An-225 has lifted loads in the region of 250 t. The Airbus Belugas top out at about 45 tons because they're built to fly into small airports. The Dreamlifter can carry 120 t.

        • Yup. That is why I mentioned stratolaunch , though roc is the craft. Lifts slightly more than AN-225.

        • Another problem with Dreamlifter and Airbus Beluga: they require airport infrastructure (specialized scissor lifts) to be loaded/unloaded, because their freight decks are so high off the ground. This limits their use to a few airports.
          The An-225 can kneel and you just drive the cargo on board.

  • Covid caused many 747s to end up in storage. They will be available for many years to come and a lot cheaper than new birds.

    • And they're getting new life as cargo aircraft. [ttnews.com]
      The 400s are in demand.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by EvilSS ( 557649 )
        Even before COVID the majority of operating 747s were flying cargo. Delta was the last US passenger airline to operate a passenger 747, and that one retired in 2017. In the US I think only Atlas Air still flies any in a passenger configuration, but they are a charter only airline flying mostly for the US military. Qantas, KLM, and British Airways operated them but retired them in 2020. There are a few other international airlines flying them but they are rare to see these days.

  • 747 holds world record for # of people on a flight (Score:5, Interesting)

    by caseih ( 160668 ) on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @12:56PM (#63110688)

    Back in 1991 while evacuating Jews from Ethiopia to Israel, they packed 1087 people onto an El Al 747-400. A woman gave birth in flight, so they landed with 1088 people. I don't imagine that was a comfortable flight, and I'm pretty sure they didn't all have seat belts on, or seats!

    • And now those Jews face discrimination [bbc.com] in Israel [newsweek.com].

      • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

        by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) *

        The Beta Isrealites are non-Talmudic which sets up one hell of a cognitive dissonance for the modern Zionists. The Dead Sea Scrolls sent shockwaves through the attempt to discredit their Torah.

        They're Enochian IIRC so the belief structure is substantially different. They also have those blinded monks which is just all sorts of questions.

        Overall they're quite "inconvenient" theologically.

        At least they have a member of Parliament now. She seems quite sharp.

  • Since the 747 and A380 are both out of production, how will Air Force One be replaced with an aircraft of comparable size?

    • The air frames are already built and they're being converted. [thedrive.com]

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Thud457 ( 234763 )
      They have B-52s that have flown for 50, 60? years. Guess who built them.
      They should be able to maintain and fly E-4s (747s) just as long.

    • Since the 747 and A380 are both out of production, how will Air Force One be replaced with an aircraft of comparable size?

      Well, the new 747-800s (VC-25B's) for the presidential fleet are still being completed, and when they are delivered (2027/2028?) are expected to have a life well in excess of 20 years (the current VC-25As will have been in service for nearly 30 years before they are retired). Accurately predicting what aircraft will be available to replace those 747-800's in the 2050 time-frame is simply not possible (if 4 engines are no longer considered mandatory, the 777x might be a possibility, and the as I recall the

      • I just hope theyâ(TM)ll switch it back to the classic Kennedy livery. Some designs are simply timeless.

        • I just hope theyâ(TM)ll switch it back to the classic Kennedy livery. Some designs are simply timeless.

          They already reverted, and while one can argue about the various aesthetics, it turns out the decision was based on an engineering recommendation, as a dark blue on the bottom could lead to increased temperatures and exceed some component qualifications (and while one could always go back and re-engineer components, it would add even more delays to a project which is already far over budget and behind schedule). So the classic Raymond Loewy livery is back (at least for now).

    • > Since the 747 and A380 are both out of production, how will Air Force One be replaced with an aircraft of comparable size?

      It's always been a tactical mistake to have one flying office building with all the eggs in one basket.

      A swarm of hypersonic craft would be much more sensible. They can videoconference among them if necessary.

      • Because hypersonic flight has been proven to be very safe for passengers. Not to mention that other countries may frown on overflights of their territory at > mach 1.
      • Be pretty easy to launch some cargo 747's as decoys if you felt the need, would it not?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by EvilSS ( 557649 )
      Boeing is working on a pair of 747's to replace the current Air Force One jets right now. When that is finished those will be operational for quite I while I suspect. The current ones will probably be 35 when retired. After that, they will probably move to a large, dual engine passenger jet as the base platform. If they want to stick with a quad engine jet, then I don't know. That's probably a good 30 years off though. I know the Air Force asked for proposals for a super-sonic plane to use as Air Force One,
    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • This is a great opportunity for Boeing to develop a highly-efficient blended wing aircraft [wikipedia.org], and use this soon-to-be-idle production line to make it. There are plenty of challenges associated with blended wing aircraft for passenger service, from loading/unloading, to incompatibility with jetways, to weird vertigo effects for passengers way out at either edge. But cargo service won't care about that very much, and the new airframe would permit substantial increases in efficiency, which all aircraft operato

    • As you said... the 777 and 787 have already been cannibalizing the 747's sales. Guess where those (Except for the -10 variant of the 787.) plus the 767 are made? They're made in that very much not-idle Everett factory in which the 747 was; with production of those winding up even as the 747 was wound down. In fact, Boeing has a backlog [boeing.com] of 849 wide-bodies, split between Everett and North Charleston. If those orders were for 747s, that would be a minimum 10-year backlog (The most 747s Boeing delivered in

  • In all the times I've flown on 747s over the decades, I've still never been upstairs in one. The chances of that happening are approaching zero now. :(

    • Lufthansa still flies the 747-8 over the Atlantic on it's transcontinental routes. For now.

    • There are still plenty of 747s in the air and will be for at least a decade or two.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by caseih ( 160668 )

      You haven't missed much. It's just a tiny bit more glorified than the business class on the main deck. Flight attendants let me have a look while boarding once a few years ago. Had the same seats as business class (maybe slightly softer cushions), just a smaller cabin.

      Granted it's a bit odd flying up front on the main deck of the 747... nose just kind of ends unceremoniously with a wall. I imagine the same is true of the upper deck of the A380 which I would love to fly on but probably never will get th

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by habig ( 12787 )
        Depends on the airline. I flew to Johannesburg on a South African Airways 747, where upstairs was just another part of coach. Was momentarily excited to be going up the stairs... but same old seats :(

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by necro81 ( 917438 )

      In all the times I've flown on 747s over the decades, I've still never been upstairs in one.

      I've seen vids from the early years of the 747, when there was a full-blown lounge upstairs, much like the lounge cars on commuter rail trains. And of course everyone was smoking like a chimney back then, as well as getting sloshed on overpriced drinks.

      Then all the carriers wised up and realized that, for the same square footage, they could make much more revenue by having seats instead of a bar.

      Apparently t

  • I remember both of my uncles in the Sea-Tac area helped build that place. That said you can't belive how big it is.

  • I still hope to fly upstairs on one of these queens of the sky before they all are retired. Iâ(TM)ve been fortunate to get seat 1A on a Lufthansa 747-800i, but thereâ(TM)s a certain je-ne-sais-quois about having to go âoeupstairsâ on a jet.

    • Re:Hope to fly upstairs (Score:4, Funny)

      by nealric ( 3647765 ) on Wednesday December 07, 2022 @03:02PM (#63111300)

      I've done it. It's kind of cool to go upstairs on a plane, but it's actually a bit annoying when it comes time to deplane. You end up taking a long time because you have a bunch of passengers awkwardly trying to get their bags down the steep/narrow staircase.

      For second floor flying, the A380 is way better because the jetway connects directly to the upper deck. Since the upper deck is typically business/first class only, it also avoids the awkwardness of coach flyers having to walk past the business/first flyers as they sip their champagne.

      • Since the upper deck is typically business/first class only, it also avoids the awkwardness of coach flyers having to walk past the business/first flyers as they sip their champagne.

        What if I like ostentatiously ignoring the rabble while they're forced to file past my big, luxurious, lays-all-the-way-flat seat?

        • Then I would advise you sit in the rear business class section of a 777 or 787. But international first class (above business) tends to avoid that experience, as it is almost always at the far forward cabin (or where applicable, on the upper deck).

          As an aside, International first out of Frankfurt is pretty choice. You have your own terminal (not just a special lounge) with a full sit down restaurant experience, showers, and a concierge assigned to you while you were there who will address you by name. You g

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mjwx ( 966435 )

        I've done it. It's kind of cool to go upstairs on a plane, but it's actually a bit annoying when it comes time to deplane. You end up taking a long time because you have a bunch of passengers awkwardly trying to get their bags down the steep/narrow staircase.

        For second floor flying, the A380 is way better because the jetway connects directly to the upper deck. Since the upper deck is typically business/first class only, it also avoids the awkwardness of coach flyers having to walk past the business/first flyers as they sip their champagne.

        This is why most airlines who operate 747's operate with the upper deck being entirely business/first or maybe just a few rows of economy. Fewer people trying to avoid bag fees by using a massive carry on that is clearly unfit to be in the cabin.

  • My family moved to Australia when I was very young, which meant trips back to the UK to see relatives, those flights were made on 747, back then kids were often invited up to the cockpit. I was fortunate enough to do that quite a few times, on one occasion I was instructed to push a button, and shortly after that the plane banked slightly. I have no idea what that button did, or if my pushing it caused the aircraft to bank, but I like to think it did. Quite sad kids these days don't get to experience this.

  • It's always been a bit of an ugly aircraft.

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