Boeing's 747 'heavy' has achieved a fifty-year reign of the airways, but
now airlines are retiring their fleets as a different type of long-haul
airliner emerges. Yet the ultimate development of the 747, the -800
model, will ply the airways for many years to come.
Even as twin-engine airliners increasingly dominate long-haul operations
and the story of the four-engine Airbus A380 slows, the world is still a
different place thanks to the great gamble that Boeing took with its
747. From early, difficult days designing and proving the world's
biggest-ever airliner, the 747 has grown into a 400-ton leviathan
capable of encircling the world. Boeing took a massive billion-dollar
gamble and won.
Taking its maiden flight in February 1969, designing and building the
747 was a huge challenge and involved new fields of aerospace
technology. Multiple fail-safe systems were designed, and problems
developing the engines put the whole programme at risk. Yet the issues
were solved and the 747 flew like a dream said pilots - belying its size
and sheer scale.
With its distinctive hump and an extended upper-deck allied to airframe,
avionics and engine developments, 747 became both a blue-riband airliner
and, a mass-economy class travel device. Fitted with ultra-efficient
Rolls-Royce engines, 747s became long-haul champions all over the world,
notably on Pacific routes. across the Atlantic in January 1970, 747
became the must-have, four-engine, long haul airframe. Japan Airlines,
for example, operated over sixty 747s in the world's biggest 747
fleet.
By the renowned aviation author Lance Cole, this book provides a
detailed yet engaging commentary on the design engineering and operating
life and times of civil aviation's greatest sub-sonic achievement.
