Capitalism has lost the 747’s drive and ambition

We might not miss the plane itself but we will miss its buccaneering spirit which is sadly all too absent from the businesses of today

This week, after more than 50 years, the final Boeing 747 rolled off the production line in Seattle. Its place in the aviation industry had long since disappeared, as airlines opted for smaller, more fuel efficient planes.

As we say goodbye to the once mighty jumbo jet, we should remember: this was a product that changed the world. It turned long-distance air travel into an everyday commodity.

We would not live in the globalised, connected world we know today without it. It may have virtually bankrupted Boeing, and its first major customer Pan Am, but it was of huge historical significance. Modern capitalism, with its dismal focus on book-keeping, share buy-backs, and shareholder value, has lost almost all of the buccaneering spirit that was behind the aircraft. It needs to recapture it.

There wasn’t a huge amount of ceremony at the jumbo jet’s retirement. On Tuesday the final 747, ordered by the cargo carrier Atlas Air, simply rolled off the production line, ending production of one of the most successful planes ever.

After its launch in 1969, Boeing went on to build 1,573 of the massive, two-storey vehicles, which were nicknamed the Queen of the Skies. A few are still flying but the 747 has long since been replaced as the dominant force in the industry by twin engine aircraft such as the 777, the Dreamliner, or Airbus’s A330s and A350s. They may not have the romance of the Jumbo, but they are a lot cheaper to run, and they can go city to city.

It is worth pausing to recall just what a huge industrial gamble the 747 was in its day. It was a revolutionary plane, way ahead of its time. The cost of building it came close to bankrupting Boeing. In the 18 months after its first flight in January 1970, only two were sold around the world. Amid the soaring oil prices and recessions of that decade, the company barely survived. Arguably, Pan Am never recovered from the cost of backing it (although the phenomenally sexist advertising probably didn’t help either).

But in the end it was a huge commercial success, cementing Boeing’s place as the biggest plane maker in the world, a lead it still narrowly holds today. More importantly, it changed the world. The vast size of the jumbo jet compared with everything that came before made long-distance flights affordable for the first time. Without it we wouldn’t have mass air travel, a globalised economy, or integrated supply chains that make distance more or less meaningless. It changed everything.

It is very hard to think of any major industrial wagers in the half century since then that have been anything like as significant.

The launch of the iPhone in 2006 definitely reshaped the global economy. Mobile, connected devices have upturned every industry. But although it was a bold move, the iPhone didn’t threaten the future of Apple when it was launched in the way that the 747 did; the company was already doing pretty well from the iPod, if anyone remembers those, and its computers.

You could also make a case for the launch of the Tesla Model S in 2012. The first mainstream launch for Elon Musk’s auto company changed the industry, and paved the way for all the electric vehicles that followed it. And yet, it hardly comes close to the significance of the 747. In reality, EVs just swap one kind of power source for another.

What about Rupert Murdoch’s launch of Sky in the early 1990s? That changed broadcasting and it almost destroyed News Corporation as well. It was a heck of a gamble. And yet it was only really the British market that was at stake even if Sky later expanded into Europe. It was never a global product in the way the 747 was, nor was its impact.

The latest comparator is Mark Zuckerberg betting the future of Meta, the company that owns Facebook, on the metaverse. But it is such a half-baked idea it hardly seems in the same league (although there were probably columnists who thought the 747 was a stupid idea at the time).

But those examples are all rarities: few and far between. Most businesses seem content simply to motor along as they have always done rather than taking the type of big bets that Boeing did.

In reality, modern capitalism has lost the ability to make the huge, buccaneering bets that the 747 embodied. The jumbo jet was created by Boeing’s legendary 1960s president, Willliam Allen, and the Pan Am chief executive. Juan Trippe. Neither was afraid to bet the company on a ground-breaking new product, to look at the big picture, to create hugely expensive products that required massive investment even when there was no proven market, nor to ride through a recession with losses that would have crippled smaller ventures.

Capitalism has lost that kind of vision. Today, corporate leaders and their backers are obsessed with stock buy-backs, preferring the safety of handing money back to shareholders rather than spending it on new ideas. Chief executives are only interested in short-term targets that pay out millions in bonuses but make little difference to the long-term health of the business. And firms are tyrannised by environmental and governance codes that emphasise box-ticking and form-filling over risk-taking and competitive ruthlessness.

Capitalism and its leaders need to find a way of recapturing the spirit of the 747 if the economy is to revitalise itself. It is not as if there is any shortage of opportunities. AI could transform the world as much as transcontinental travel ever did, and so could genetic engineering, or robotics, or indeed space exploration.

Exploiting these opportunities will take corporations that are capable of boldness and vision.

‘Without it we wouldn’t have mass air travel or a globalised economy’