Why the Sun is setting on the Boeing 747 Guy Gratton, Brunel University London It’s difficult to imagine now, in the age of mass global travel, that building an aeroplane to carry hundreds of people at a time was once seen as a huge risk. But as the world’s first wide-body airliner, the Boeing 747 went on to change not only aviation but the entire tourism industry. …
I was quite young when I first saw one. I was lying in the grass just beyond the runway boundary fence at Düsseldorf airport and one took off right over me - wow! When I flew into Heathrow I saw one parked next to a Concord, which looked like the plane equivalent of a lifeboat in comparison. After the 707 it became my favourite plane to fly on (various dodgy Ilyushins operated by equally dodgy airlines being my least favourite)!
Ditto. Saw my first Jumbo from upper deck of a bus in London. First time I flew one, the interior seemed like walking into a cinema.
Such a contrast to my first ever flight in a passenger plane -- Vickers Vanguard, London to Glasgow in the late sixties. Whole damned thing vibrated from the turbo-prop engines and I spent the journey watching a rivet in the bulkhead turning in its socket, hoping that the plane's structure was better finished than the interior.
But worst flight; from Frankfurt on a really old Boeing 707 of Kenya Airways. The only seat on a flight to London on a Friday evening. Had come in with a fairly full load from Mombasa and was quite ripe. The seat tray fell off when opened and the plane had to be diverted to Manchester as it lacked fog-landing tech.
I was sitting next to the then Minister for Aviation at a dinner in the early 70s. He told me that the 747 had killed any hope of commercial success for Concorde. His explanation was that the 747 (-100 as it was then) required a certain number of passengers in First for the economics to work and running a Concorde fleet alongside meant all your First passengers would opt for supersonic. So it was an either/or choice and the airlines went for the 747.
My first flight in a 747 wasn't until 1980, but in those far off days, best beloved, intercontinental air travel for the company was always in First. Spoils you for cattle class, I'm afraid.
"But worst flight; from Frankfurt on a really old Boeing 707 of Kenya Airways. The only seat on a flight to London on a Friday evening. Had come in with a fairly full load from Mombasa and was quite ripe. The seat tray fell off when opened and the plane had to be diverted to Manchester as it lacked fog-landing tech."
Worst flight - Bosnia to Serbia on Jat airways, 50 seater prop plane
Looked at the plane and thought "like F... am I getting on that, interior no better
Seat was missing a couple of bolts and rocked backwards and forwards.
Safety information in Russian, done a bit in English then gave up.
Was on the taxiway when full power applied for takeoff
Literally two wheeled turn onto runway for takeoff.
Plane starts shaking badly, thought "that's a bad runway"
Plane takes off, in air, still shaking badly.
The next hour or so thinking "Wonder when the bolts holding the wings on were last checked or for that matter, anything holding the plane together".
Landed with probably all of the plane intact.
Following day flight back, plane switched to an airbus with the same number of people that would've fitted on the prop plane.
Used to fly out to customers at least once a week, hate airplanes, hate flying,
747's weren't bad to fly on.
To some extent, it's a matter of who is maintaining the aircraft. I had a very worrying hour when looking out of the window of an Airbus flying from Nairobi to Mombassa 20 years ago, I saw the cowling loosen and then come away on the port engine. No cabin staff to speak of, so I kept schtum - and didn't mention it until later to my then girlfriend who had come over for a 7 day holiday while I was based in Kenya.
" an Airbus flying from Nairobi to Mombassa 20 years ago, I saw the cowling loosen"
That kind of thing was still a problem relatively recently, caused typically by cowling latches not being closed properly and the post-maintenance checks and pre-flight checks all failing to spot it.
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cowling+latch+airworthiness
When I was at growing up in South Africa we had a cub field trip to the local crisp factory (at a time when RSA had loads of flavours) and then to Jan Smuts (as was then) airport where we toured the airport hangers and were shown around a 747. The "upstairs" cabin on this model was more than the turn left on boarding. There were only about 4 or 5 seats, each big, luxurious and separate from the others. Had own toilets and washing facilities.
I flew back from Detroit upstairs in the 90s as there were still a couple of BA 747s with cattle class up there. Much better than the main cabin seating as the check in had only put adults up there and had left the middle seats of each set of 3 empty.
I have subsequently turned left thanks to a more recent, slightly more generous, employer.
The Virgin 747s running from San Francisco to Heathrow still have 15 or 20 economy seats upstairs; it's well-worth getting one if you can. Quite apart from being quieter, window seats get a little shelf and, of course, you walk straight down to the exit, allowing you to get into the border control queue a couple of hundred people earlier than you otherwise might have done.
But the fourth engine gave the plane a significant safety advantage in that it would retain much greater propulsion power if one of the engines failed.
Wrong: 4-engine, 3-engine and 2-engine airliners all have to be able to climb with one engine failed on take-off, and have the same thrust margin available for that failure case. The only safety advantage of a 4-engine aircraft, in a period of relatively unreliable engines compared with today, was the two engine failed case!
In fact most of the time a twin is so over-powered to allow for the engine failure case that it has much higher performance after take-off than a 4-engine aircraft - something you can observe at an airport any day of the week.
In fact most of the time a twin is so over-powered to allow for the engine failure case that it has much higher performance after take-off than a 4-engine aircraft -
There are exceptions. I've watched a 747 take off at Heathrow, ambling down almost the whole runway so slowly and for such a long time that it seemed it was never going to get airborne. A minute or two later a Concorde entered the same runway. The usual earth-shaking roar, and what seemed like 1/4 of the runway later it pointed its nose into the sky and climbed effortlessly away. Hardly a fair comparison, I know, even though they did both have 4 engines.
I won't miss 747's at all, they certainly put the "coach" into "coach class". Concorde, though... :(
@Credas
Or indeed ETOPS...
Had many an occasion to view the business cabin of a 747-400 upstairs as a haven at IGI Airport after a long stretch working in Delhi! BA in those days had the air of a flying gentleman's club where you could exchange relieved glances with your neighbour and then get on with the business of ignoring them until final approach the other side!
"But the fourth engine gave the plane a significant safety advantage in that it would retain much greater propulsion power if one of the engines failed."
A more significant failure mode for the tail-mounted engine involves its somewhat-uncontained failure leading to damage to the tail control surfaces, or the systems that control them. There's a list of such incidents; most of which ended badly.
In hindsight, putting an aircraft engine in the tail is about as bad a conceptual design error as bolting a spaceship *beside* its large External Fuel Tank.
Although I think most cases of the tail engine failing and causing ‘difficulties’ were with the DC-10 the rather rapidly developed competitor to the L-1011 Tristar. It probably helped that the Tristar had 4 hydraulic systems versus the DC-10’s 3 as, in the only case I can find, of a Tristar having an uncontained engine failure it retained control with the one working system.
Having said that statistically the DC-10 was more likely to kill you by having the cargo door fail and the control runs being crushed in the subsequent explosive decompression, than due to an uncontained failure of the tail engine. Or from one of the engines falling off. Or from one of the other engines having an uncontained failure dislodging a window and the passenger being sucked out.
To be honest I think they were just badly designed rather than the three engine configuration being a bad idea…
As a young child, I adored the shape of the 747. I would try to draw its curves, and collect pictures of it. I remember being annoyed that an aeroplane book I had only contained a picture of the 747-SP , which was too short and stumpy. I didn't like the newer "stretched" models either, they spoiled its lines. :-)
> I didn't like the newer "stretched" models either, they spoiled its lines
That's debateable. The hump was there as an artifact of the original USAF freighter design and elongating it turned out to make the aircraft more aerodyamically efficient (which to my mind means the lines were improved) to the tune of the fuselage generating 30% of the thing's lift.
"But the fourth engine gave the plane a significant safety advantage in that it would retain much greater propulsion power if one of the engines failed."
not really true
If you lose two engines on a three engined aircraft you're going to crash
If you lose two engines on a four engined aircraft you are probably also going to crash
the probability of losing two engines on a four engined craft is higher than that of losing two on a three engined craft. Now, which is safer?
Firstly it depends on when you lose the engines - takeoff becomes challenging (though not impossible). Landing becomes interesting - but actually we've seen 777s land without any engines. Cruise? Well we've seen engineless glides to safe landings...
As for the probabilities of losing engines, well it looks like you're assuming that the probabilities are independent - I'd suggest that in most cases of multiple failure they aren't.
"As for the probabilities of losing engines, well it looks like you're assuming that the probabilities are independent - I'd suggest that in most cases of multiple failure they aren't."
Correct - that is my assumption. But if you want to look at non-independent failure then the four-jet fares even worse because of the risk of uncontained turbine failure, or an engine fire, taking out the adjacent engine. That's not possible in a trijet
Not so, there was the case of a BA 747 a few years back that suffered an engine failure at take-off from LAX (if memory serves - West Coast, anyway). After a professional assessment of the situation the flight crew opted to continue towards Heathrow, not a decision that would have been taken if losing another en route would have meant 'crash'. AFAIK losing two on a Jumbo limits altitude to 29,000 (no crossing the Himalayas, then) and makes landing trickier if they're both on the same side. The triple hydraulics are designed to cope safely with losing two engines.
Correct - that is my assumption. But if you want to look at non-independent failure then the four-jet fares even worse because of the risk of uncontained turbine failure, or an engine fire, taking out the adjacent engine. That's not possible in a trijet
The way engines are place on a wing makes it unlikely that a a uncontained failure will take out another engine . Also on a 4 engine job it won't rip through your tail taking out all your hydralic lines
x7 "...four-jet fares even worse because of the risk of uncontained turbine failure, or an engine fire, taking out the adjacent engine. That's not possible in a trijet."
You've ignored the several tragic incidents where the failure of the tail-mounted engine took out the tail control surfaces or the systems that control them.
As far as I know, that's one of the fundamental reasons that tri-jets are no longer a favoured design architecture.
Sorry x 7, you're wrong. Losing two engines on a four-engine airliner once airborne is fine. However, trying to *take off* with just two engines at MTOW is... dodgy(ish), i.e. not a recommended course of action. Preference is to abort take-off if possible.
As for the loss of two engines in a 3-engine airliner, you won't crash (provided your controls are ok), but you *would* declare an emergency and request nearest runway to get the thing down.
That's not entirely true. If engine three falls off due to fatigue pin in the mount, and knocks engine 4 out of its mount as well (along with hydraulics in the wing) you have fairly uncontrollable plane. Especially if flaps (due to loss of hydraulics) only extend on your left wing.
The El Al crash, right. I was just about to reference it. Two failures on the same side does make things trickier, raises the risk of loss of control.
And IIRC a tail engine failure did lead once to a crash because it managed to knock out ALL FOUR of the hydraulic systems, including the one on the opposite side, making it a Failsafe Failure.
Reminds me of this old joke:
A military pilot called for a priority landing because his single-engine jet fighter was running “a bit peaked.” Air Traffic Control told the fighter pilot that he was number two, behind a B-52 that had one engine shut down. “Ah,” the fighter pilot remarked, “The dreaded seven-engine approach.”
This post has been deleted by its author
That's the one, the B-17 was known internally at Boeing as the type 299 and was an unrequested private design hence it's Y1 prefix when tested. Neither of the air forces asked for it, Boeing just went ahead and built the prototypes off the experience of the B-15 which if I remember was even bigger in some respects than the B-29 but built in 35/36.
As an apprentice it was our job to pour over the cockpit drawings as supplied by Boeing and taking measurements so that we could produce our own drawings of the component parts. The drawings supplied from Seattle were twice full size and were dimensionless. i.e. no dimensions were in the drawing itself.
This was so that we could build a flight Simulator.
Them were the days.
Oh, and it was all done on the floor of the 'new erection' shop (erection as in where things were put together and not the other meaning). This was at Redifon flight Simulation in Crawley.
I lived under the flight path into heathrow when I was growing up I loved watching all the aircraft following the line of the A4 into the airport, Jumbo's used to feel so much lower than everything else because of their size.
I'd never flownon a jumbo until a trip to Chicago about 15 years ago and I've not been on one since. I did how ever get to play a casualty and slide down the emergency chute while taking part in an emergency drill at Heathrow.
I also got to play with the foam gun of a fire truck :D
A long time ago I was a firefighter at a busy international airport. As part of that job you naturally had to learn where exits are, how much fuel they carry, where to spray suppressant foam etc for each type.
The scale of the 747 full fuel load was breath-taking. In reality, if one had crashed on take off, the combined water capacity of our six trucks, about 120 m^3, would not have stood a chance against the 200m^3 of fuel. Lookup up the Tenerife disaster for an illustration of what happens.
We did have one powder truck too, basically a giant fire extinguisher on six wheel, but it made such a mess it probably would have blinded and choked every escaping passenger for hundreds of yards.
As a surprisingly minimalistic but quite funky salute to the 747, I'll just leave this here...
All of this discussion about the number of engines reminds of one of those TV bloopers shows I saw many years ago.
A TV reporter was interviewing the pilot of a small aircraft at the local airport.
The reporter and the pilot were standing with their backs to the aircraft (and the reporter obviously hadn't really looked at it properly) when this exchange took place:
Reporter: "Can this aircraft fly OK on one engine?"
Pilot: "It flies best on one engine - that's all it's got".
I have one of the last space shuttle at Dulles airport on the back of a 747, just arrived to take up its place in the Smithsonian.
The bus driver (driving us recent Internationals to the terminal - this was 2012), had noticed the unique sight, and stopped the bus so we could get some decent photos.
P.
17 January 1991, the first day of Desert Storm's air war, I was booked to travel in economy on a BA 747 to New York. Due to the almost complete cancellation by other travellers all 10 or so of us remaining were invited into the BA Concorde Lounge at Terminal 4. BA then apologised that they were going to have to cancel the flight due to lack of passengers and then informed us that 'regretfully' we would have to wait until the next flight at 11:00am .. which then turned out to be the morning Concorde to JFK.
I have always been able to forgive British Airways for one hell of a lot since that day.
Back in the late-80's the sister of a colleague was in Heathrow, just checked in for one of the routine every-two-hours shuttles to Belfast and waiting at the gate. The flight was called, and after the usual 'boarding will be in seat row order' came the surprising announcement "your aircraft today will be Concorde". Not a joke, BA had promised to have a Concorde at that afternoon's Belfast airshow, and someone decided that there was no point in flying it up empty... They hadn't said anything, probably because they knew there would have been a crazy fight for tickets, they just quietly slotted it in to replace one of the shuttles. It didn't go supersonic, of course, but there were 100 very happy shuttle passengers that day (probably 100 more on the way back).
Apart from the amazement that the things could actually get off the ground, I can't say I enjoyed actually flying in the things. I think they introduced the idea of passengers being treated as cattle. The all-the-engines-under-the-wings configuration makes the cabin very noisy for all except first class passengers. I regret the demise of the engines on the tail aircraft. Did anyone every fly in a VC10? A new model of that would suit me. All the current ultra-modern planes get you there at exactly the same time feeling just as lousy.
I thought it was the DC10 that made Boeing into the global leader ....
Yes, the whispering T-Jet was quieter in economy, but the 747 was still much quieter in economy than a modern Airbus. And, originally, nothing like as crowded as economy on a modern flight. I remember a quite civilized flight on Air France in the early 70's.
What I find really amazing is that the new big engines are so big that they're wider than the body of Concorde
And there's talk of making them even bigger...
The bigger the fan, the greater the thrust you get at any given speed - so you don't have to spin the fan as fast to get the same thrust.
The plan is to cut down on noise at airfields...
Vic.
Another design feature was that you could hang a failed/repaired engine on a hard point on the wing of a 747. Couldn't change it in mid-flight but it ensured being able to get a dodgy bird to the maintenance facility location. Actually rode a TWA 747 from Heathrow to JFK in about 1977.
@daddyo, QANTAS still uses Fifth Pod Ops, others do too... In fact, here's a recent video QANTAS did of such a run from SYD to JNB via PER when one of their -400's was stranded in Africa with a broken engine: The Fifth Pod. :-)
Unfortunately the new 747-8I does not do Fifth Pod Ops, but apparently the GE engine on it splits at the half-way point and can be shoved into a freighter.
I about an hour I shall be boarding TG 475, a 747-400 I expect, and walking upstairs to where Business Class is located. I am not sure if this is the new or old seating configuration, but in any case, it will be a very comfortable and quiet flight back to SYD.
Back in the 70s, I flew Business Class on TG's then brand spanking new 747! TG's first 747, and as I recall they were very proud to be operating the "Jumbo". It was my first Business Class sector. 3 1/2 decades have passed, and several million air miles as well, but I still like the 747 - I suspect that I will pass away before the last 747-8 retires from service (I haven't flown this latest variant yet. LH operate them, but wiki informs of only 121 orders, so I may have to look hard to find a flight)
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
