Boeing’s last 747 is rolling out of the factory
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Do you have anything online about your work at Boeing?
It was always a treat to hang around with Burt. The other engineer there who mentored me was Erwin Schweitzer, who'd take me flying with him (he was a pilot) and let me fly it once in a while. Burt and Erv were why I stayed at Boeing as long as I did.
Another engineer who took me flying was Ernie Spriggs. He hailed from Lockheed, and always went on about how great Lockheed was. I finally asked him "Ernie, if Lockheed was so great, why are you working at Boeing?" Ernie replied "because one day I told Mr. Lockheed he was a fucking asshole."
Good times.
P.S. What you suspect is true. A lot of Boeing engineers were also pilots. They loved airplanes and flying and engineering.
I was looking to a career in Aerospace Engineering - but it's an interest. I'm still in college, but I'm not sure if it's what I want to do. Regardless - what do you think makes an engineer an engineer's engineer?
Burt, who was in his 60s, was always excited to show me some new way of doing things, showing off his notebook, showing me his (then useless) slide rule, etc. He was also an endless source of engineering tales which he'd tell with relish. So was Erv, though Erv didn't work on the 747.
And they were happy to tell this stuff to me, because it was exactly what I wanted to be doing.
On the software side, I haven't met John Carmack, but I suspect that working with him would be a similar experience. Woz too, obviously.
For example, students would often do a double major, with the other one AY (Astronomy). Why sign up for all that extra work? Because AY was fun fun fun, but one couldn't get a job in it. Being around people like that is tremendously fun, I was never bored. We had Carl Sagan over for dinner once, and the entire conversation was about what would life based on silicon rather than oxygen be like. There was no class in this, no homework assignment, it was simply fun.
(Dr. Sagan went on to write about "silicon giraffes".)
Yep, we were all nerds.
My two favorite classes were cosmology (where things just bend your mind from sheer scale and spacetime effects) and another class called “life in the universe” taught by Dr. Virginia Trimble. Both of these, I had countless “what? WHAT?? did you all just hear that?” moments where you felt that you were being exposed to the most fantastical ideas.
Day one, Dr. Trimble gave us a sheet with 35 assignments. She said, do any 21 of these well and you get an A. No final or requirement to attend class. Or, you can stay and also attend the lectures and you’ll learn something.
Almost every assignment was as thought provoking like your silicon life form discussion.
One was to change one of the universal constants (like if the gravitational force was slightly stronger or weaker etc) and describe how the universe would be different.
Another was to write an Astronomy themed song/poem/short story. I wrote a short story about a boy and girl that go stargazing for a date and he tries to impress her with facts about binary stars and romance but doesn’t know that she is an Astro major and knows more but she finds his attempt endearing.
Greatest classes I took.
So it sounds like dinner parties were as fascinating as we’d imagine!
That turned into a half or maybe hour long conversation. Turns out he was an engineer with Boeing and was involved with stuff and knew the big shots circa WWII and/or a bit thereafter. This was early 2000's and he looked like he could be well into his 80's or even a well preserved 90-ish, so I had no trouble believing him. Plus, the details he knew, and it was a pleasant and interesting conversation, anyway.
I wish I could remember his name.
It was a fascinating conversation, and I knew just enough to be able to hold up my end in basically understanding and appreciating what he was saying. I think -- hope -- he enjoyed that.
(And I was humble and curious enough to ask lots of questions. And I guess I knew enough to make some counterpoints and do my part in furthering the conversation.)
I left with the impression that he was a dyed in the wool engineer and personality. Although, at this remove, I'm a bit vague on how much of the conversation was engineering and how much business, about which he also certainly had some opinions.
Anyway, I only provide the details because it was the better part of twenty years ago and I'm sure I'm not revealing his hang out spot too soon.
He did have two places to recommend, the much more convenient of which was Lorraine's. They were packed, but they fit me in for dinner at the bar and the wild salmon was excellent.
P.S. I'm almost certain it was called Lorraine's, but I'm not finding it now. A short distance away, right on the water -- in fact, sticking out into the water. Gorgeous sunset views -- both the 2005 and 2006 trips had great weather.
Sam. Sam was his first name. Maybe another hour or two will give me his last name, from memory.
The restaurant was Salty's. I wasn't zoomed in enough to get the name to pop.
Lorraine's is the steak house in Omaha that both my great aunt and Warren Buffett liked.
That's what comes of not thinking about something for a decade or two...
By the way, Walter, I agree with the others here; I always enjoy your comments and the insight they provide. This one just triggered a memory in me, of a character who reinforced my impression -- at some remove, on my part -- of the old Boeing.
Plus, if Salty's has held up, it's worth a visit.
Boeing used to offer tours of the 747 factory. It's immense. I wonder if they're spinning up a different manufacturing line in that building?
Not sure if it’s retained that title, but the inside is just insanely vast.
Amazing to me that a building over half a century old is still the largest in the world.
May that's just myth, but I like that myth enough to not google it.
Fly into New York City. Visit museums there for several days. See a Broadway show. See the Intrepid.
Take the train down to Washington DC. Several days at the Smithsonian there, including a trip out to the Udvar-Hazy Center. Take a day trip by train to Baltimore to see the National Aquarium and the Maryland Science Center.
Rent a car, drive to a beach town in Virginia for a weekend; drive back and take the train back to NYC. Or, drive up to a Delaware beach instead and return the car in NYC.
See the other museums in NYC that you missed the first time. Fly home.
E.g. Natural History, Air & Space, etc.
Growing up in the DC area has spoiled me for museums. They're high quality and generally free admission.
Second this. Glad to see that it's still open. I was last there sometime in the early 90's.
I recommend going to the Davis-Monthan Air Force Boneyard in Tucson, AZ [3] and the nearby Pima Air & Space Museum [4] to see all the other big baddies.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus_Beluga
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_Dreamlifter
[3] https://www.airplaneboneyards.com/davis-monthan-afb-amarg-ai...
https://pimaair.org/plan-your-visit/available-tours/
(They stopped at the onset of the pandemic and AFAIK never resumed.)
The museum is still well worth visiting, and driving around you can see some of the planes parked in the Boneyard. Davis-Monthan also puts on a pretty good airshow every couple years.
From what I can tell, the pandemic gave many government functions and bureaus carte-blanche to stop working while collecting the same paychecks.
One interesting thing about the Beluga: the pilots very often fail to land them and have to do multiple attempts! The Beluga landing is kind of loud, but it's nothing compared to the sound of the engines when they pull up after a failed attempt
They're likely just doing a fly by for a visual inspection of the runway since it's not a major public airport with full time air traffic control.
Most people are smart enough not to park something in the middle of a runway but might not have an intuitive grasp of how large a wingspan these things have.
Have seen Belugas flying and on the ground at Toulouse.
The whole thing was designed on paper, with hordes of draftsmen drawing every single section, detail, etc.
I’m always impressed at how complex things could be with no CAD
https://arstechnica.com/science/2013/04/how-nasa-brought-the...
Early in my career I had an “Asimov moment” firsthand - I was an intern working on a project to instrument an industrial facility with better sensors, etc. The whole place was dependent on a 100 year old machine that just did its thing every day with only minor maintenance and repairs. (I think the power source has been swapped out a few times) The manufacturer was long defunct and the plan was to keep the thing running indefinitely. Pretty sure it’s still there!
That depends..
[1] Though I believe that aircraft manufacturers should require some minimal level of comfort on planes they make.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Solomon#World_record
Leaders of that time knew they had to start with the grandest project before cascading for a full range of smaller products; whereas leaders today roll out an MVP and try to grow from there.
It truly was another epoch, the epoch of mass amounts of money and resources, not little optimizations.
So by the time the 747 was flying with airlines, they already had the 707, 727 and 737 flying.
https://twistedsifter.com/2010/11/picture-of-the-day-boeing-...
https://qph.cf2.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-e4288424b0e63bb7cb098...
One late evening, shortly before 23:00, where airport is closing for the night because of local noise restriction laws, except for emergencies, otherwise heavy fines, something wasn't on that glidepath.
Immersing me in it's landing lights from beneath, and somewhere in the middle from each wing. Flew erratically. Curve to the left and coming down really low, then UP, then going back right towards the normal path. Coming directly over me.
While doing that the wingtips vibrated by at least half a meter, making the position lights a blurred vertical line. Wasn't even that loud, just BIG!
If it wouldn't have done the reclimb and curving back towards the path, it would have crashed into the highrises next to me.
What was it? A 747 from UPS, clearly visible because the golden letters against the brown tail were illuminated.
Sat there at my desk, thinking WTF?! Are you doing VFR, or what?
Managed to fulfill the 747. La Musée had an A380 on the tarmac too, but not open to walk through.
Honestly, for aviation geeks, it's a worthwhile visit for the 747 and Concordes alone.
The world suddenly got a lot smaller and closer. Visiting foreign lands became a thing accessible to a vastly larger proportion of the population and that was all most needed to get out there and see some of it.
Closely followed by satellite comms, then fibre, then the web & consumer internet. (Skype and its ilk).
The A380 is great and drew a crowd for its first landing in aus. Somehow its still not a Jumbo Jet for all that it is even bigger.
Which areoplane is winning the kilogram kilometers per Litre of jet fuel for long haul nowadays?
Pretty sure it would be A350, or B787, or one of the latest gen updated B777's. Basically stick the latest generation biggest super high bypass turbofans on a modern body with lots of composite construction to minimize weight.
We often flew with a small little airline called 'Travel City Direct' who have since been merged into Virgin Atlantic. They leased two 747's from a charter company, one of them was all dolled up in their own livery, the other was just white and a looked super ropey on the outside...but inside it was still night and day a better experience than anything else.
We were fortunate enough to be in the 'bubble' on that one so had a great upstairs view - it was still only economy, but felt more like premium.
I later found out that the blank white plane we flew on so many times ended its days as the white 747 you used to see at Dunsfold - where Top Gear is filmed. Yep, that 747. The one they modified and used in the 007 film Casino Royale and Quantum of Solace to be the Skyfleet S570.
However time marches on, and it’s also nice to notice how much nicer and quieter the 787 and A350 are, not to mention more efficient.
If you want to fly 747 - Lufthansa is your friend as the sole operator of the passenger version 747-8. Business on the upper deck is a delight in that plane, especially the window seat.
We flew our second leg in a 777 and it was noticeably louder and more airplane like.
The very first one was on one of their newest A380s which even let you pair my Bose Quiet Comforts with the in flight entertainment system over Bluetooth. That really was the dream.
Korean Air and Air China also operate the type, but Lufthansa does fly more than half of the 747-8I production, excluding VIP-configured aircraft.
I sort of understand the economics of why they don't work for shorter routes, but those long flights are still extremely necessary, and everything else is godawful.
Occasionally you hear about cabin layouts that provide more width and/or pitch, but these never come close to recovering the space that has been lost over the past 20 years. Airlines don't announce space reductions, after all. For them it's always quietly 3 steps ahead (less space), loudly 1 step back ("roomier" seats).
Recently I read that Airbus was developing a revision to the A350 that would permit adding an entire additional row. Airbus had to do this because not only does the 777X support 10-abreast layout, but most customers have long moved to 10-abreast layout in the older 777 despite the 777 never being designed for 10-abreast. In fact, IIRC 1 or 2 major A350 operators had already moved to 10-abreast on the existing models, but they may be pushing the regulatory envelope, thus the need for Airbus to cooperate with some redesign work.
I've generally preferred Airbus planes. For reasons I never really understood (perhaps by mere coincidence of their design process, coincidences in evolutions in cabin construction material, or maybe deliberate design by Airbus), economy coach layouts typically provided anywhere from 1/2 to 2+ more inches of seat width relative to the comparable Boeing plane and cabin. A Boeing 737 or 737MAX with even the newest cabin construction technology is always going to be a tighter squeeze (at least width-wise) than an Airbus A320, for example.
Coach layouts for the A350 are likely going to shift from being some of the best to some of the worst in long-haul travel as the additional row comes half from accommodating thinner walls, and half from seats with less width. Same thing happened with the 777: when it first entered service it was one of the roomiest; now with 10 rows, and especially when invariably combined with reduced seat pitch (which I personally don't care quite as much about as others) it's soul crushing--metaphorically, figuratively, literally, actually, physically, all of the above.
10 abreast in a350 sounds terrible though. Might work for shorter ultra cheap charters but I very much doubt that any mainline carrier would consider it. Think they did a similar concept with 11-abreast a380 but luckily no-one caught on.
The only reason it's never been tried in an a380 is because people already can't fill those up, so what would be the point of more seats?
(That was more of a side reason. The real reason is that the FAA requires an additional flight attendant for every 50 seats, so Jetblue just removed enough seats to get to a round multiple of 50 and decrease the amount of labor required.)
"Seat pitch" is the term you're looking for, and the airlines have been steadily reducing the seat pitch over the last ~decade to squeeze in an extra few rows.
Some airlines are notably worse than others. Spirit and Frontier, in particular.
https://www.businessinsider.com/airline-seats-shrunk-over-ti...
Spirit for a one or two hour hop vs Spirit across the continental US is two different experiences.
(Why not just build more planes? Airbus is backlogged for years, and there aren't enough pilots. Spirit is a package deal in that sense.)
https://www.cntraveler.com/stories/2015-10-27/the-airlines-w...
Recently I flew back from Europe on a 787 and that too was a wonderful experience. The plane feels like the future and was so comfortable and nice to be on.
I'm going to assume many people here have never flown on one.
And here I am, sitting in Berlin, reading this article about the last 747, happy in the knowledge that I will once again fly on the top deck of a 747 in exactly a week. Lufthansa's still flying them, and I could not pass up the $500 upgrade for the flight home.
I'll make sure to savor every moment.
The A380 looks real ugly for me resembling the beluga.
747 looks beautiful, majestic and aesthetically very pleasing.
Sad to see this plane approaching the end of its life.
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.
The smaller two-engine jets have grown bigger and fly now further. Therefore the B747 and A380 operate mostly between the big hubs far away with many passengers, fitting the design profile. Deutsche Lufthansa and Korean Air operating happily with the B747-8i and the plane works reliable. Reliability: The B777X is delayed, the B787 suffers quality problems and "lost tools", paint goes off (both B787 and A350), the engine problems on the A320neo seem solved some time ago and then the MCAS on the B737-Max is another sad story.
Lufthansa solved it delivery issues with the B787 by buying used ones. And the B747 just looks like a Queen, graceful and elegant :)
The end of 747 production was “inevitable but it would be a little more palatable if they were making something new,” said Richard Aboulafia, managing director at consulting firm AeroDynamic Advisory.
Having more smaller planes lets you do more direct flights and gives you way more flexibility should you need to change destinations, lease an empty plane to someone else, etc. It also costs you less in fuel when you need to fly it with few or no passengers.
Of course getting _any_ new plane means a years-long backlog right now so the newest trend is to acquire a regional or small airline and dismantle it purely to get the airplanes. Virgin America (by Alaska) and Spirit (by JetBlue) were victims of that strategy and won't be the last.
And as you write, smaller planes better serving less loaded destinations, it allows airlines to fit customer demand. As you said. Better fly four times the week than just two times and lose half of the passenger to a competitor. And yes, they need to maintain only two engines.
The 777X is therefore an interesting design decision. Really big, only two very powerful engines and they need to handle the extra complexity and maintenance of folding wingtips. Just to fit the plane into smaller airports.
The biggest change so far is engine power, efficiency and reliability. Passenger and freight demands are changing even more frequently. And airports often cannot grow and even if - only slowly.
Also the storage bins along the walls due to the sharp angle were awesome if you had a window seat.
In the early-mid 2010s I was fortunate to fly several times on the upper deck of an EVA Air 747 (SEA–TPE). On these planes, the upper deck was regular economy in a 3x3 configuration. It felt like a miniature 737 inside the huge 747, cozy in its own strange way. They also provided slippers and the window seats had a fun shelf/storage space, making it feel all the more special.
https://www.seatguru.com/airlines/Lufthansa/Lufthansa_Boeing...
Haha, an entire engine cowl for 1.5k. I wonder how much shipping costs.
Meanwhile during MCAS affair, 400 units of 737 Max 8 were stuck to the ground and 300 more were in production if I remember correctly, which shows we were producing the old 747 at a much slower pace.
notably in the early 90s virgin atlantic was one of the first airlines to offer personal seatback video screens in economy on their 747s. the screens were backlit color lcd (similar to atari lynx), about 3.5" in diameter and had 6 or so channels that were on a four hour loop.
edit: here's a link to an image of one for the curious. wild how far we've come. https://www.reddit.com/r/aviation/comments/1d5qij/virgin_atl...
it's a bit sad to see the program end, as it sort of marks the end of an era where the engineering feat of putting something that large in the sky was prized. i suppose that focusing on operating efficiency and environmental sustainability are far more important, but it's hard to not be nostalgic for the long running engineering triumphs of the jet age.
EDIT: heres what those headphones look like, they're literally just tubes that carry the sound from a tiny speaker in the armrest: https://static.flight-report.com/media/photos/jRkTcB8Xr0/IMG...
For various reasons, my family would fly back and forth between the U.S. and Europe, so I grew up flying thousands of miles a year on 747's.
The year I get married we decided to check out Israel, and flew twice! from NY -> Israel -> NY -> FL -> AZ -> NY -> ETC), with almost all legs on a 747.
In Phoenix I learnt to pilot a small plane, (and have sat in the pilot's seat of 747 without touching anything :)), and that's probably because of my rearing.
I have not flown on a 380, but the 777 is still my favorite plane to fly on, edging out the 787 even, though not by a whole lot- the increased comfort (higher pressure and humidity) in the cabin and reduced noise don't quite make up for the lack of spaciousness you feel inside a 777.
I personally have no desire to get on a 380, they just seem too big... like the tropey quote "They were so obsessed with whether they could, they didn't think of whether they should..." it just seems out of scale somehow.
As an example, the Fischer Airfish AF-8 can transport up to 8 passengers (+2 pilots) [1]. They're whitelabelled as Wigetworks Airfish around the Singaporean area [2]. The concept of the plane/boat hybrid is as old as 1997, which is kind of ridiculous [3].
[1] (German) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fischer_Airfish_AF-8
[2] https://www.wigetworks.com/airfish-8
[3] (German) https://www.fischer-flugmechanik.com/site/index.php?menu=rea...
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32148657
but I believe that weather conditions limit greatly their use in many places.
Hopefully we'll soon fly sustainably though, by sequestering CO2 equivalent to the flight emissions.
I only fly domestically nowadays. Rarely do I end up on anything bigger than a 737.
I have no idea if there is any intent behind this specific number of produced planes, but I suspect that there would be people at Boeing who feel the same kind of mild satisfaction as I did when I saw the number of aircraft produced.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Longest_flights#Scheduled_serv...
What made 747 special was enabling cheap flights for mass tourism. Four hundred passengers to Acapulco and Benidorm.
Kinda the opposite of the Airbus situation where they banked on a mostly single use plane plane that was all about moving a large volume of passengers a long distance and instead smaller planes took over and the plane was of little use beyond passengers.