In 1965, Pan Am president Juan Trippe phoned Boeing president Bill Allen and asked if Boeing could build a plane twice the size of anything in the air. Allen said he would look into it. The two men then shook hands on a deal neither company could really afford.
The result was the Boeing 747. It first flew on February 9, 1969, and entered service with Pan Am in January 1970, carrying 400 passengers, more than twice what any other airliner could take.
A bet the company could have lost
Development cost $1 billion in 1960s money, more than Boeing’s entire net worth then. The company borrowed so heavily that its bankers privately wondered whether it would survive a failure. No existing wind tunnel was big enough for a full-scale model, and nobody had built the engine it needed, a high-bypass turbofan producing 43,500 pounds of thrust.
Boeing put up a factory at Everett, Washington, the largest building by volume ever built at the time. It hired 50,000 workers, many with no aviation experience, and trained them on the job. The jet was designed in 28 months, though the first rollout came 16 months behind schedule. Joe Sutter led the design team.
The hump was a freight decision. Designers expected supersonic transports to take over passenger travel, leaving the 747 mostly as a cargo aircraft. So the cockpit went on an upper deck, which let freight load through the nose. When the supersonic jets never arrived, the space became a passenger lounge.
The Pratt & Whitney JT9D engine pulled more thrust from less fuel than the low-bypass engines before it. Most of its air bypassed the combustion chamber. The design became the template for every large commercial engine since.
Who could fly
Before the 747, intercontinental travel belonged to businessmen and the wealthy. A 400-seat plane on the same route as a 140-seat one, with roughly the same crew cost and overhead, could sell seats at a fraction of the price. In the decade after its introduction, the average transatlantic ticket fell by more than 40% in real terms. Charter operators, package holidays and budget long-haul flying followed.
The last 747, a 747-8 freighter, was delivered in February 2023, closing a 55-year production run. Boeing built more than 1,574. Major carriers retired the passenger versions years earlier, but freighters still fly long-haul cargo routes every day.
