Goodbye to the Jet That Ruled the World
Boeing Plans to End 747, The Plane That Changed the World As epoch-ending statements go, this one was stealthy and carefully modulated: “It is reasonably possible that we could decide to end production of the 747.”
And so it slipped out, in a filing to the Securities and Exchange Commission, first reported by Aviation Week, that Boeing foresees the moment when the single most consequential airplane it ever built will come to the end of its viable life—probably around 2020, which would give the 747 fifty years in production.
Like millions of people across the globe, I long ago came to take the 747—the Jumbo Jet—waiting at an airport gate as a distinctive and welcome presence, an airplane that reassured you with its substance and solidity; never exactly sexy but with a perso...