End of the runway for the ‘Queen of the Skies’

Picture: British Airways

I’ve blogged before about the majestic Boeing 747 and how, after five decades in the air, its future was limited. Today, the era of commercial aviation that the original “jumbo jet” defined will come to something of an end when the final 747 rolls of the Boeing production line in the US.

The plane, a cargo version built for Atlas Air, will be the 1,574th production model built by Boeing since the programme began in 1968, the result of Pan American founder Juan Trippe challenging then-Boeing president William Allen to build a plane even bigger than the company’s 707 model, the original game changer to long-distance air travel. The 747, however, evolved things even further, providing a platform for up to 400 seats and the ability to cover vast distances relatively quickly. Significantly, it enabled affordable intercontinental travel: I’m sure most Brits’ experience of places like Florida and New York were the result of flying there in a 747. I know all my first visits to America were via the beautiful flying ocean liner.

Three years ago, as Covid started to wreak havoc, British Airways announced the immediate retirement of its 31 747s. The airline had, then, by far the largest fleet of the type still flying. However, even before the pandemic grounded airlines, the aircraft that democratised air travel had started to become an anachronism as more fuel efficient planes like the Airbus A350 and Boeing 787 DreamLiner began replacing such an ageing gas-guzzler as the 747. BA’s decision to end use of the 747 was, romanticism aside, a rational one. It was planning to retire the 747 in 2024 in any case - 25 years after its first -400 models were introduced - and had remained remarkably loyal to the type. US carriers United Airlines and Delta ended their 747 operations in 2017, while Virgin Atlantic (with whom I took my first US trip, in 1992) retired their 747s in 2020. Lufthansa, one of the few airlines to buy the last 747 type, the -8, are planning the retirement of their fleet, as has KLM.

In those mad days of yore when I used to get on a plane as often as some board a bus, no journey would fill me with the same excitement as one in which I flew in a Boeing 747. When I left San Francisco to move back to Amsterdam in 2003, I got upgraded to a business class seat for the flight with the now defunct Northwest Airlines, who put a 747 on the route. That meant sitting in the upper deck cabin, with a window seat looking out on the Golden Gate Bridge as we soared out of SFO. I’m not too ashamed to admit that I shed a tear - but not because I was leaving California, just the shear romance of it all. I've been lucky enough to get seats on that upper deck on a number of occasions, and it never fails to enamour, not the least, the novelty of having side storage bins that follow the contours of the Jumbo’s haughty prow.

Picture: British Airways

Even ‘downstairs’, the 747 experience just seemed like no other. Despite its enormous size, the 747 was a very quick plane. While it could never compete with Concorde for speed across the Atlantic, seven hours in the air wasn't a particular hardship to get to New York (even less on the way back to London with a decent following wind). What let BA’s fleet down towards the end was the ageing interior of their 747s, which often lacked the basic connectivity that more modern planes offer as standard. But these were, ultimately, minor quibbles. On journeys to and from San Jose in a previous job, the sensible approach would have been to take BA’s direct flight from Heathrow in a comfy 787, but with the 747 still on the San Francisco route, I’d opt for the love of Boeing’s jumbo, even though there’d be an arduous hour’s drive down to Silicon Valley on landing.

The 747’s decline is sad but it had, to some extent, outlasted its relevance. It will, though, continue in a long-running build for the US Air Force of two specially adapted jets to be used for the President (as ‘Air Force One’), along with cargo versions like Atlas Air’s new addition, a popular option for freight carriers due to the plane’s vast interior. Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic is also using one of his airline’s old 747s, Cosmic Girl,  for its nascent satellite launch venture. 

Indeed, the idea of large jets is not entirely over, either. Although the double-deck Airbus A380 has now stopped production, it is likely to remain in use for the foreseeable future, despite being, like the 747, four-engined. Emirates bought 118 of the type to ship large numbers of passengers to and from its Dubai hub. British Airways has even brought its own A380s out mothballs, having put them into storage during the pandemic. While not as romantically appreciated as the 747, passengers love the A380 for its comfort and, for such a lumbering giant, efficiency in flying point-to-point. 

It is, though, clear that despite the A380 enduring, twin-engined jets like the A350 and Boeing’s 777 and 787 models do the job, with less passengers, and more efficiently, from a carbon footprint point of view. The days of flying in a plane with an upper deck, and more than its sense of aviation decadence are, without doubt coming to an end.

Picture: British Airways

 

I'd love to fly away, but not just yet

It is Day 35 of the COVID-19 lockdown in the United Kingdom. Since it began I have started a new job, lost almost a stone in weight and, thanks to tauntingly sunny weekends spent in the garden (not Richmond Park) I’m showing the first brown shoots of a tan. In April. This not-going-out-further-than-the-back-door regime has entailed a lot of looking up into geographically unfamiliar Tuscan-blue skies over south-west London, a vista seemingly unblighted by the ever-present traffic pollution that hangs over the city. 

Another notable absentee has been the air traffic that usually, at certain times of the day, takes off from Heathrow in a south-easterly direction and over our house. Being a bit of a plane geek (I spent many happy hours of school holidays on the roof of Heathrow’s Terminal 3 logging tail numbers in the days when such things were allowed), I’ve been fascinated by the stark reduction in aircraft overhead. What has been taking off has been the occasional passenger flight to eastern Europe or Middle East destinations, while the flight radar app on my iPad has shown that UK commercial airspace is mostly being used by cargo planes. Environmentalists will, of course, be delighted: the blue skies and reappearance of wildlife to suburban gardens is just the return to pre-industrial times they long for. You can’t help, either, enjoying sitting in a garden with the only noise pollution being birds tweeting and children letting off steam in a distant backyard. 

It does, though, makes you wonder how we might return to normal, and what the next normal will be. I’ve always looked at planes in the sky as a symbol of escape, of getting to be somewhere else, somewhere more interesting. And with what should be the holiday season approaching, and the lockdown showing no signs of being lifted, the chances of seeing the outside tables of a Greek taverna, a Sicilian trattoria or a Spanish tapas bar anytime soon seem depressingly limited. Not that I’m craving flying anywhere. The experience of my last job disproved wholesale the idea that it’s better to travel than arrive, and even, to travel at all: in the 12 months between September 2018 and September 2019 I took 51 flights, a ridiculous programme, especially in terms of my carbon footprint, but also in arcane face time philosophy. 

If one good thing has come out of this coronavirus crisis, it’s that the Internet hasn't broken and video conferencing technology is more than adequate at keeping in touch professionally and socially. The first few weeks in my new job may have been a bit weird, in that I’ve seen more of the interiors of my new colleagues’ homes than in any previous job in my 34-year career, but that hasn't stopped being able to function perfectly adequately. Of course, if you work in a job where collaboration and spontaneous engagement is productive, e-mail, Skype and instant messages are a little limiting, but nowhere near the inhibition some might have argued they were. There’s no immediate sign that I’m going to set foot any time soon in my company’s Paddington offices, and I'm fine with that. Our technology is holding up brilliantly, everyone is making the best of it, and it has even fostered an uplifting bunker spirit. Going back into the office will be a challenge for employers, especially as they ensure safer social distancing in communal areas, in canteens, meeting rooms and lifts. The average desk distance in most modern offices is around 1.5 metres, which would require new thinking by corporate real estate planners if employees are to come back. 

Picture: British Airways

So if we’re still, as a nation, wisely reluctant to get on public transport again to get to work, I can’t see much appetite for getting on a flying toothpaste tube for a couple of hours or more for leisure. The other week it was reported that IATA, the international airline trade association, had suggested that for mass air travel to resume, airlines would be forced to fly with at least a third of their planes’ seats empty, with middle seats on single-aisle, three-abreast configuration short-haul flights left vacant to maintain social distancing. Michael O’Leary, the outspoken Ryanair chief executive has branded the idea “idiotic” and said it offered little benefit in mitigating the spread of COVID-19. O’Leary’s airline, of course, has benefited more than most from packing ’em in, last year flying more than 152 million people, placing it at the top of European carriers by passenger numbers. “We can’t make money on 66% load factors,” O’Leary has said. “Even if you do that, the middle seat doesn’t deliver any social distancing, so it’s kind of an idiotic idea that doesn’t achieve anything anyway,” he told the Financial Times. As we've seen with Richard Branson's attempt to have the UK government support Virgin Atlantic financially in the crisis, a well-paid airline CEO complaining about not making money is not going to wash too well. 

When life returns to normal for the airline industry - if it returns to normal - things will clearly be different. Business travel still accounts for the bulk of airline profits, but with video-based professional distancing being accepted like never before and, ideally, remaining the default, non-essential trips abroad for work are going to be pared back, and that’s even before CFOs impose even more draconian travel restrictions as the financial crisis grips harder. The future is certainly looking bleak for the airline industry, even if a partial lifting of the lockdown frees up the leisure travel market. Michael O’Leary believes that normality could return if airlines adopt Asian practices and force passengers to wear face masks, and airports bring in mandatory temperature and even virus testing. That still won’t stop airlines collapsing. The Airport Operators’ Association has said that passenger numbers are unlikely to return to pre-pandemic levels until 2022. British airports have seen passenger numbers slump by 97%, with up to 80% of staff being furloughed in some cases.

All this, though, assumes that 'normality' will be anything like that we enjoyed as little as a few weeks ago. There are, for now, too many variables, and even if lockdown rules in all those countries affected by this pandemic start to relax, what that relaxation will be like, and how long it will remain in place before a second phase of COVID-19 forces us back behind our front doors again is anyone's guess. The extreme view of the world today is that the virus has initiated a form of Pol Pot's Year Zero regime. It's not, obviously, but the absence of planes in the skies, and even traffic on our roads, may be one of the things that doesn't recover. Bad news for the airline industry, which has enjoyed an unprecedented boom in the last couple of decades. Bad news, too, for the likes of Boeing and Airbus, who were pumping out new planes at a rate of knots until relatively recently (Airbus CEO Guillaume Faury told his 133,000 employees in a letter last Friday that the business was “...bleeding cash at an unprecedented speed, which may threaten the very existence of our company”). It is, though, conceivable that the world will start moving again. Chinese tourists will still want to visit Paris, Americans will still want to have their photographs taken outside Buckingham Palace, and I for one will still want to see the Mediterranean again. Just not yet.

Is it the end of the Queen of the Skies' reign?

Picture: British Airways

Long before I ever experienced air travel for myself my imagination was captured by a photograph of my brother 'starfishing' inside the engine nacelle of one of the first ever Boeing 747s to arrive in Britain, 45 years ago. At the time the 747 was the largest passenger aircraft in the world and the idea of a plane so big it could carry 480 passengers was almost beyond comprehension, let alone the fact that its engines were large enough to allow someone to stand up in their cowlings.

Today, we take such things for granted. More than 100,000 commercial flights take off every day around the world, and whether long-haul or short-haul, the "jet age" is now a fairly old fashioned notion. In 1969, when the 747 first flew, it was still something for the privileged. But the 747 was soon to change that, bringing air travel to the masses. Today, airlines rely on planes designed for the fuel efficiency and function, rather than their romance, and with the rise of budget aviation, flying has become somewhat commoditised. But with a 'statement' aircraft like the Concorde no longer in service, and the majority of Boeings and Airbuses in use by the world's carriers little more than flying buses - air buses, if you will - bland, twin-engined toothpaste tube with wings designed to extract maximum bums-on-seats value, the 747 remains the only airliner to retain the glamour of the earliest days of the jet age.

Despite fewer airlines flying them today, the 747 still commands attention. It is still the plane you marvel at when you see it taking off, and if you're lucky enough to fly on one, there is still a 'moment' to be enjoyed when arriving at the departure gate and seeing that majestic brow (which always reminds me of Disney's butler in 101 Dalmatians...).

There are plenty of big planes - the rival Airbus A380, Boeing's own 777 and 787 - but in an era of trawlers, the 747 is an ocean liner, a grand vessel that stands apart from anything else at the airport, with pleasing curves and that distinct hump on top comprising the cockpit and the upper deck cabin.

Indeed, it is that top deck that still, 47 years after the 747 first flew commercially, still captures the sense of wonder. Just as Airbus have marketed showers, gyms and private cabins for the A380, in 1969 the upper deck of the 747 was portrayed as an exclusive lounge, accessible only by a spiral staircase that, in itself, appeared to be highly exotic. These days, most 747 operators airlines configure the top deck for business or premium economy seating, but there is still an innate sense of luxury if you do get the chance to climb those stairs (and if you get a window seat, you get your own personal locker space alongside you, courtesy of the unique curvature of the plane's cabin).

Luxuries like that aside, the 747 was always much more than a flying gin palace. Boeing's predecessor, the 707 had, along with the Douglas DC8, been the first four-engined, long-distance planes in commercial usage, and together they can be credited for creating mass air travel. But the 747, which doubled the capacity over the 707, opened long-haul travel for all, enabling airlines to transport close to well over 300 passengers (the modern 747 carries 384) in a single aircraft. Thus was born the 'jumbo jet'.

Sadly, however, the end is in sight for the 747. Boeing is considering ending production as orders for new planes dry up as airlines look to smaller, more fuel-efficient aircraft to fly on their high-capacity, long-haul routes. Currently Boeing, which has delivered 1522 of the planes since 1969, has just four net orders on its books, and for the cargo version only. Apart from the US government considering the 2011-introduced 747-8 model as a replacement for the ageing 747s currently used as 'Air Force One', the US president's world famous ride, production is being slowed to just six aircraft a year.

Picture: Boeing

Boeing, of course, is not alone - even Airbus is struggling to find customers for its 550-seat A380 - but while that plane may be one of the most comfortable I've ever flown in (for something so big, it takes off with the grace of a ballet dancer), it's stumpy, dumpy profile lacks any of the elegance of the 'Queen Of The Skies'.The 747 doesn't just look beautiful, it's a remarkably quick plane, too, cruising at around 550 miles per hour (Concorde may have flown almost three times as fast, but carried less than a quarter of the passengers). Pilots love to fly it and passengers still love to fly in it, even in economy, where it's high-sided walls give a sense of space lacking in many more modern long-haul jet designs. And despite its relative inefficiencies, the 747 remains popular with airlines, including Lufthansa, KLM.

Picture: British Airways

British Airways, for example, will continue to be one of the 747's biggest operators for a considerable time to come, with 40 of the -400 model flying to major destinations like New York (the original route of BOAC's first 747), Beijing and San Francisco.

BA insists that the 747’s day is far from done. Even with the airline introducing the A380 and the Boeing 787 Dreamliner alongside its Boeing 777s, the 747 is still considered the "backbone" of the airline's long-haul fleet, and will remain in operation until at least 2020.

Last September BA even announced a major refurbishment of its 747s, bringing interiors, seating and in-flight entertainment systems up to the same standard as its newer planes. The 747, BA said, continues to "hold a special place" in the hearts of its passengers. And I must admit, for me too. Like, I suspect, most people my age, my first flight outside of Europe was in a 747, and even after all these years, I'm still excited by the prospect of travelling in one.

More rational people will argue that once you're strapped into your seat, a plane's a plane. That may be true, but even knowing that, when I fly to Miami later this year it will be in a British Airways 747, a plane designed in the early 1960s and built in the late 1980s. And I will still be experiencing one of the most distinctive and distinct aeroplanes ever built, a classic, rather than an ultra-modern marvel. And that will suit me just fine.