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Happy Birthday Jumbo
The Jumbo has reached middle-age; its 40 years old this year.
But far from showing it's age; there's still life in the old dog yet, with the next version, the 747-800, about to be launched in 2010. And to think that it has taken forty years for a true competitor to try and fill the Jumbo's shoes, in the shape of the Superjumbo, the Airbus A380, is testament to Boeing's engineering skills.
And when you talk about the Jumbo, you have to use superlatives. The main one being that the 1,525 Jumbos ordered have collectively clocked up around 42 billion nautical miles. That's the equivalent of having flown to the moon and back 100,000 times, having made approximately 17 million flights.
The first Boeing 747 flexed its wings over Washington State in 1969 and enjoyed around 75 minutes in the air. It was called City of Everett, the place where it was built, and it carried the hopes of the Boeing company. Repeated funding exercises have been needed to get the cash needed to build the Jumbo and observers at the time had said that had it proved a white elephant (an appropriate simile), it would have been the end of the Boeing Company. The Jumbo proved anything but a white elephant, and it has been one of the world's greatest products.
In 1970 the first commercially equipped 747, decked out in the colours of the now defunct airline Pan-Am, was christened by the then First Lady of the U.S. Pat Nixon and made its first commercial flight on 22 January, 1970.
The Jumbo had a number of aviation firsts. It was the first commercial airliner to have twin aisles and provide the passenger with a sense of roominess. It was also the first to have an upper deck and gave the marketing men a chance to show first class passengers leaning against a top deck bar enjoying a mid-flight drink.
That novel idea was eventually dropped when the airlines realised that a 37,000 feet high bar was not a good use of space. Nowadays most Jumbo's use the three-class system (between 350 to 400 seats) and put their pampered first-class passengers in the nose of the Jumbo, with the upper deck for business class (or sometimes economy, in those Jumbos exploited for maximum seating capacity) and the economy passengers in the main cabin.
The pilots also have their cockpit at the upper end of the upper deck, meaning that they had to be re-trained to not only fly such a larger aircraft, but one where they are positioned so far off the ground. And it was not only the pilots that had to change. Airport runways had to be widened and lengthened; taxi-ways had to be strengthened, and, terminal buildings made larger to accommodate the bigger aircraft and their larger loads of passengers.
The 747 also introduced the concept of 'big fan' engines. Such was the power needed to get the Jumbo in the air, that it was only possible after a leap-forward in jet-engine technology. Not only did they become more efficient, they became huge, having to collect as much air as possible to force along the engine, which was then mixed with aviation spirit, before being ignited and creating the thrust necessary to lift tonnes of metal into the air. And such is the size of a modern turbo fan jet engine, that you could fit a fuselage of a 737 into the front of it.
But, for the airlines, the Jumbo was not about remarkable engineering, or the beauty of the aircraft's design; for them, it all comes down to economics. The Jumbo offered lots of seats and that meant lots more passengers on each flight. Of course, the downside is that the more seats you have and the more you can't possibly fill it, then the more money you will lose.
So whilst the airlines were salivating at the thought of getting more passengers on board, they were also worried if the travel industry could stand that increase in numbers of people wishing to fly. They needn't have worried, because apart from the times when recession has blighted the world economy (such as the various oil crises), the Jumbo has done much to stimulate air travel, opening up the market by allowing airlines to lower fares.
In the broadest terms, a commercial airliner with 400 seats does not cost twice as much to run as one with half the number of seats. The effect is that the cost per seat on a large aircraft is reduced over its smaller counterparts, so once airlines realised there were major economies of scale to be achieved, then fares came down (not only because they could, but they had to to increase the market size) and modern aviation as we know it now, was away.
And few aircraft have played such a part in modern culture. The Jumbo has played a starring role in many movies, novels and songs.
Whether the pretender, the A380 Superjumbo will prove such a hit with people's imagination, remains to be seen, but one thing is for sure, the good old Jumbo is set to be around for many decades to come.
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