Boeing 747: The Original Jumbo Jet

Boeing’s 747 ‘heavy’ has achieved a fifty-year reign of the airways, but now airlines are retiring their fleets as a different type of long-haul airliner emerges. Yet the ultimate development of the 747, the -800 model, will ply the airways for many years to come.

Even as twin-engine airliners increasingly dominate long-haul operations and the story of the four-engine Airbus A380 slows, the world is still a different place thanks to the great gamble that Boeing took with its 747. From early,...