Boeing produces its last 747
EVERETT, Wash. — More than a half-century ago, Boeing unveiled the 747, a massive and striking airplane that captured the public imagination and brought air travel to the masses. The jet has been a workhorse since, ferrying passengers and cargo around the world. But its days are numbered: On Tuesday, Boeing plans to hand over the last 747 it will ever make.
With a distinctive hump, the 747, nicknamed the “Queen of the Skies,” is perhaps the most widely recognizable commercial airplane ever built. The plane transformed air travel and became a symbol of American ingenuity. It could still be flying decades from now, a longevity that aviation historians said was testament to the work that engineers, designers and others put into repeatedly remaking the airplane.
“It’s one of the great ones,” said Shea Oakley, who runs an aviation history consulting firm and is a former executive director of the Aviation Hall of Fame and Museum of New Jersey. “If you had to make a list of the 10 most important airplanes ever built since the Wright Flyer, the 747 needs to be on that list. It was a quantum leap.”
The 747 is composed of about 6 million parts produced all over the world. But the final, awe-inspiring work of assembling them into an airplane was completed at a factory in Everett, Wash. That plant, generally regarded as the world’s largest building by volume, was built for the 747 in the 1960s. The plant has been used to make other planes, but it has remained home to the 747 down to the final one: No. 1,574.
Seen from a distance, the specialists working on exposed sections of a 747 appear tiny, like miniature surgeons operating on parts of a blue whale. Often under bright, white lights and supported by lifts, rolling staircases and other structures, they install, arrange, assemble and test the guts and shell of the plane.
Production of the last 747 started in September and was typical of how its predecessors were made. In one bay of the factory, workers constructed the wings, starting with the spars that serve as the backbones and then added parts called the ribs and skin. In another bay, they build sections of the body, or fuselage, and then added wiring, plumbing and hydraulics, said Steve Kopecki, director of manufacturing for the 747.
Over the years, as engineers and designers worked on the plane, Boeing’s financial situation dimmed. Airline orders were slowing and costs for the 747 and the supersonic jet, which the company would abandon in 1971, were soaring.
Some airlines still use the plane for passenger flights, including Lufthansa, Korean Air and Air China. But the 747 has increasingly fallen out of favor with many airlines and will probably end its life carrying cargo.
The last of the airplanes produced were all 747-8 freighters for Atlas Air, which operates the largest 747 fleet in the world and leases out airplanes and crews for cargo or passenger operations.