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

 

Wingless birds

Picture: Emirates

If there is one thing that I have mixed feelings for as a result of the pandemic, it’s that it has severely curtailed travel. There are reminders everywhere: friends posting pictures from parts of the world not in lockdown and Facebook's own ever-helpful reminder facility of fun times gone by. The other day we got a glimpse on television of Palma in Mallorca, the last time either of us were on foreign soil or travelled anywhere by plane. And that was October 2019.

I can’t complain, though. By the time I left my previous job, a month before that trip, I’d taken 52 flights in as many weeks, a ridiculous and unsustainable amount of air travel. As my various frequent flier memberships attest, I’ve experienced my fair share of work and leisure travel over the last three decades, not least of which the 17 years I lived abroad. During that time, too, I got to fly on most types of airliner, nerdishly satisfying my childhood planespotting hobby from the inside out. Even during that last 12 months of intense air travel for work, I never failed to get a little excited boarding a Boeing 747, or one of the brand-spanking new Airbus A350s, and was in a constant dilemma over whether it truly is better to travel than to arrive.

Picture: British Airways

My first flight on the Airbus A380 ‘superjumbo’ came on my birthday in 2011. My friend was playing a gig in New York, and being 11/11/11, I thought I’d treat myself to a birthday weekend away. Turning up at the gate at Paris Charles de Gaulle, I was confronted by the bulbous prow of the 380 - a plane I’d previously only seen from the ground at the Farnborough Airshow. With the 747 the first jumbo I’d ever flown on, on my first ever trip to the US, it was genuinely exciting to be boarding only the second type of passenger plane of that size to enter mainstream airline service. To satisfy my own geekdom, the giant double-decker had innovations such as cameras in the tail and underside that allowed you to see where you were going on the seatback screens, a feature I found addictive as we taxied to the departure runway and, before you knew it, this lumbering giant lifted off, gracefully and physics-defyingly, with hardly any sense of acceleration. I hardly watched anything else on that screen for the duration of the flight, even if the vista was mostly cloud.

I would go on to travel several more times on the A380, with Air France again, British Airways and Emirates, to places like Miami, Los Angeles and Dubai, each flight as comfortable and uncomplicated as any I’d ever had. Which is why I’m genuinely sad to see that the type is already for the knacker’s yard. 

Just as COVID-19 has brought about the end of the delightful 747, most recently for BA and Virgin Atlantic, who retired theirs this year, the pandemic has hit the airlines’ fleets of other big jets, with the A380 faring worst. 

More than 90% of the four-engined planes have been grounded since the coronavirus curtailed international air travel, and it now seems like many will never take off again. Research by aviation data specialists Cirium suggests that 380s - along with older A340s and some Boeing 777s - are being retired “sooner than expected”. 

Even though the 380 was only introduced in 2005, and most airliners remain in mainstream service for up to 30 years, it has always proven to be a challenging aircraft to fill. In some configurations it can seat up to 800 passengers, although no airline has actually taken up that option. The biggest problem for the A380 - even before the pandemic struck - is that gas-guzzling four-engined aircraft have become unfashionable, especially with long-distance travel now covered, perfectly safely, by super-fuel-efficient twinjets like the Boeing 787 DreamLiner and A350. 

Picture: Emirates

Still, though, airlines invested in them, most notably Emirates who married the plane to their strategy of making Dubai its global operations hub. The airline even put great store behind attracting premium customers, with enhanced first and business class cabins that included better in-flight WiFi than that on the economy deck, and even suites with their own showers.

As of today, the airline has 112 of the type in service, almost half the total built, but has effectively brought the aircraft’s production to an end by announcing that it would not be taking up the final 11 of its 123-plane order. The last 380 will roll off the Airbus production line next year. According to Cirium’s 2020 Airline Insights Review, as of this month, only 21 A380s were in service, with some 219 in storage, some indefinitely while others might end up being covered into freighters. Air France - with whom I made my 380 debut - has already withdrawn its fleet permanently, with Lufthansa and others planning for a near future without them. 

There are two key factors at work here: firstly, the 380 has been a victim of its own short history. By the time Airbus got it off the ground, industrial advances in more fuel-efficient airframe and engine technologies were already producing new marques that were instantly appealing to cost-conscious airline CFOs. The 380, like the 747, quickly became an icon, and much loved by those who flew on it (and who flew it). But it was something of an anachronism, even by the time it first took off. Sadly, its withdrawal so soon after COVID brought about the demise of the 747, has become inevitable. 

The second factor is, clearly, a pandemic that has decimated air travel. Some predictions suggest that it won’t be until the middle of this decade before the industry returns to anything like it was before the virus broke out. As we saw in the wake of SARS and 9/11, air travel will return, once the majority of passengers feel it safe to do so (though that hasn’t stopped others…), but it raises the question as to how it will return. 

All I know is that we can’t stay cooped up forever, and this time of year - with TV ads for holidays and the Sunday supplements doing their best to tempt you to places you could go, the desire to get on a plane and go somewhere will only grow stronger. It’s just unlikely that you’ll be doing it on one of the most distinctive and comfortable airliners I’ve ever flown on. #sadface

Picture: British Airways

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 an end when the very last 747 rolls of the Boeing production line at its vast plant at Everett in Washington State 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, which was at the time regarded as the aircraft that revolutionised long-distance air travel. The 747, however, evolved things even further, filling an aeroplane with up to 400 seats and the ability to cover vast distances relatively quickly with powerful engines. 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 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

Free fallin’

© British Airways/Stuart Bailey

I have been accused, light heartedly, I think, of pandering on these pages with my rants about air travel and, in particular, British Airways. It has been suggested that by having a moan I increase the chances of a cheeky upgrade next time I step aboard a plane belonging to what used to be known as “the world’s favourite airline”. Except that it no longer is, by a significant long chalk, and the odds of getting anything gratis out of BA under its current penny-pinching regime are next to nothing.

I write this while waiting to fly back to London from Munich with Lufthansa. I should have been flying with BA, but then they sent me an e-mail to say that my flight had been cancelled, due to the impending pilot’s strike, and that I needed to rebook with someone else. Which I did. And then, 24 hours later, I received another e-mail from British Airways saying that, actually, my flight to Munich was going to fly, after all. Except it wouldn’t have. As I arrived yesterday morning, Heathrow was a car park of BA planes. As far as the eye could see from the perimeter road there was tailfin after tailfin emblazoned with the airline’s red, white and blue motif. None of them were moving. The disruption caused by the 48-hour walkout will go on for days. In total, 1700 flights were cancelled, affecting 195,000 passengers and leaving 150 of BA's 278 planes - and 700 pilots and 4,000 cabin crew - in the wrong place, with other factors like mandatory rest hours likely to prolong the chaos. The whole affair has cost BA at least £100 million in lost revenue, which was probably the point.

Alex Cruz
© British Airways

At the heart of the dispute by BALPA, the pilots’ union, is a claim for better pay from an airline that last year made almost £2 billion in profit, the result of CEO Alex Cruz’s ruthless application of a profit-first philosophy which removed free snacks on economy class flights in a hope to compete with the likes of easyJet and Ryanair (and in the process, downgrade BA's brand value even further). Mr. Cruz, by the way, earns £1.3 million a year from his job. Now, pilots - as opposed to those who clean the planes between flights and load baggage - earn well. Pilot salaries start at £90,000 and rise to almost £170,000 for senior captains, but the union argues that pilot salaries were frozen at a time when BA was in financial recovery. On top of that, they get to book personal travel for themselves and their families for a fraction of what the travelling public has to pay. Not bad conditions. But when you see your employer not only return to profitability but make record profits on the back of a business model designed to profit even more, it is, perhaps, understandable to want a slice of the action. The upshot, however, is a two-day strike that has ruined honeymoons and wedding anniversary trips, and, crucially, disrupted business travel. Environmentalists will argue that we shouldn’t be flying at all, but this is not the point. People still need to go places, and the strike has made that significantly more challenging for those who already had plans in place.

BA's daily losses throughout the strike and its costs during the knock-on days is money it could probably do with to fix the systemic issues that have seen it plummet to 55th out of 65 airlines in global satisfaction rankings. That is entirely of its own doing and the net result of a litany of offences that have conspired to erode customer loyalty, from £4 Marks & Spencer sandwiches on short-haul flights to squeezing in more rows so that legroom (even in business class) is shorter than in many rivals' cabins; then there’s the atrocious rate of return for Executive Club members trying to build privilege tiers and Avios points - and, therefore, loyalty - and being pitifully rewarded on both counts; and, finally, simple breakdowns in operations, such as the disastrous data breach that cost it £183 million in a record fine, the two major IT outages in as many years, and the most recent debacle involving rogue cancellation e-mails. I’ll even add one more: the airline has just relaunched its iPad app, rendering it now with “limited functionality”, according to one official Twitter reply to a complaint from someone who’d launched it only to find that it now only allows users to book a new flight. No longer can it give you details of your bookings, what you’ve earned air miles for, or other useful information about your BA experience. Nothing.

These might sound like the gripes of an over-privileged individual with club class tastes and club class expectations. But as someone who has to travel a lot for work - mostly economy class, I might add - it’s been frustrating to the point of genuine sadness to see an air carrier like BA, that used to stand for something that felt that you were being treated like a valued customer and not a commodity from which to plunder for profit, go down this path of eroding customer quality. Fault lies squarely with BA’s management and that of its parent company, IAG. Their fanatical profit obsession has reduced the airline to one you'd only choose if there were no better alternatives. I will still have to fly with them on some of my regular routes, but when you look at what your loyalty is rewarded by (and access to a business lounge being about the only thing these days), I could go elsewhere and get a sense of better service all round. Flying Virgin across the Atlantic is still the more enjoyable, up to date experience it was almost 30 years ago when I made my first trip to America; the Middle Eastern carriers have long established themselves as the preferred choice for many destinations in Asia and the southern hemisphere. Even upstarts, like Norwegian, have found a business model that balances economy travel with a product you feel delivers value for money.

The recent report by reputation management specialists Alva which revealed that BA’s ranking had sunk to 55th made specific reference to passenger perception that the airline is all about cost cutting for profit. It has tried to respond by claiming investment in new aircraft like the Airbus A350 to replace shockingly ancient Boeing 747-400s and 777-200s, along with improvements to in-flight catering and, very slowly, the rollout of inflight WiFi (a technology I first experienced on an American Airlines flight 10 years ago). But these are all cosmetics - expensive, yes, but still cosmetic - when the core of the customer experience is still being eroded by simple, stupid mistakes like sending out erroneous e-mails, or allowing IT systems to collapse, stranding and severely inconveniencing hundreds of passengers.

Reputation matters, as people in my own profession are prone to incant, and when a once great airline like BA suffers such repeated fundamental failures, you’d expect Mr. Cruz and his boss, Willie Walsh, to pull their fingers out and do something about it. Worse, when people are driven to tweeting “I want my British Airways back”, it’s clear that there’s an awful lot to fix. They’d better get on with it. Fast.

Queen of the skies heads slowly towards abdication

Earlier this week I let off some steam on this site about the decaying state of British Airways' customer experience. One of the points I raised was the airline's continued reliance on the Boeing 747, which celebrates its 50th birthday tomorrow.

As I wrote on Monday, the plane holds a fascination with me, even if it is now somewhat irrelevant as a passenger aircraft. Nothing looks quite like the Queen of the Skies and, I suspect, nothing will again, especially with talk of the only other 'Jumbo Jet', the Airbus A380, already running out of commercial runway. When it first flew in 1969, the 747 was a technological marvel, in terms of speed, passenger capacity and comfort. Its predecessor, the 707 might have accelerated the jet age, but the 747 democratised air travel, enabling distances to be covered further, more quickly and by more people. Today the mode is for efficient twin-engines, not four, and for carbon-fibre constructions to improve efficiency further. That the 747 has outlasted newer models, like Boeing's 757 and 767 is a testimony to the fact that only the jumbo can do what the jumbo does. And that, strangely, is keeping it flying well beyond its half century.

As a passenger aircraft, the 747 is heading towards retirement. Just 200 remain in passenger use, including with British Airways, the single biggest operator with 34 in the air. But the iconic shape is set to continue flying for the foreseeable future with an unexpected uptick in its use as a freighter. Not so long ago there were fears that the 747 would come to an end altogether, following a lacklustre order book for its latest -8 model, which was only adopted for passenger use by a handful of operators including Lufthansa. But with logistics companies like UPS finding a renewed use for the 747 as a cargo carrier, shipping ever-more goods around the world as the online shopping boom continues (air cargo rose by 3.5% last year, according to the International Air Transport Association), the 747 is still proving that it can do a unique job in the aviation industry. Last year UPS ordered a further 14 of the freighter variant of the 747-8, to add to the nine it already has, a shot in the arm for a plane Boeing had said only two years previously could be brought to an end amid falling orders and pricing competition from smaller rivals from Airbus.

The end will, probably, have to come eventually. British Airways' drawdown of its 747-400s, introduced at the end of the 1990s, will be completed by November 2022. Dutch carrier KLM will phase out its remaining 747s by 2021, leaving Lufthansa, Korean Air and Air China as the last of the national flag carriers with the type in use.

Like many, my first long-haul experience was on a 747, and it still defines the romance of air travel, even if better and more comfortable planes are in more comumon use. 50 years on from that maiden flight on 9 February 1969, the giant aircraft remains a majestic sight and a majestic experience, especially if you get the chance to climb that spiral staircase up into its 'hump' (which was, once, the height of airline luxury as the upper deck was used as a flying lounge for first class passengers. Latterly, airlines - striving to maximise space - have used it for premium economy seats).

Today, there are still over 500 747s in use for passenger and cargo duties, and one of the most famous, those used by the US president as 'Air Force One', will be flying for years to come after President Trump agreed to ordering two new ones (after spitting out his dummy over Boeing's original price of $4 billion per plane, a total deal of $3.9 billion was agreed, with the new planes being delivered by December 2024). Commercial aviation will have long moved on by then, but the fact that two new 747s will be flying, 55 years after the first took to the air, will be a remarkable endorsement of a remarkable machine.

Falling out of love with the world's favourite airline

YouTube/British Airways

Last Friday, at the end of a week in which British Airways cancelled, without warning or explanation, my flight back to London from Silicon Valley, the airline breezily launched "a love letter to Britain", a glossy TV commercial featuring, amongst other famous British faces, Gary Oldman, Olivia Colman, Anthony Joshua, Ellie Simmonds, Nicola Adams, Paloma Faith and a posthumous cameo from David Bowie, all presenting a cosy, patriotic picture of an airline that is, now, owned by an Anglo-Spanish company based in Madrid.

It’s all part of BA's centenary which, according to an e-mail that landed the same day, marked “a hugely exciting time for us". The e-mail went on to trill that BA "wouldn't be celebrating without you. You have made us who we are today, and we're immensely proud of how far we've flown together”, followed by the revelation that "since you first travelled with us in 2003 you have flown 201,191 miles, which is the same as flying 8.1 times around the world." This, however, is not strictly true: I’ve been flying with BA a lot longer than that, it’s just that I only signed up to its Executive Club loyalty scheme in 2003. Here in lies part of what makes the modern-day British Airways - a lot of marketing masking an absence of the substance that built the so-called British “flag carrier” and its reputation in the first place. It’s been a long time since BA could call itself "the world's favourite airline". Because, frankly, there are many others that are simply better.

I say this partly out of love and loyalty. I took my first BA flight in 1989, and it was quite a way to start - First Class to and from Moscow as part of a Sky TV documentary team. I began flying regularly with BA in the mid-90s when my PR job with Philips frequently took me to Amsterdam, Berlin and elsewhere in Europe. And then, when I moved to Amsterdam itself in 1999, BA became, for the following 17 years living abroad, something of a bus service. So you could say that over the last 30 years I’ve invested considerable loyalty in the brand, even if it doesn’t show anywhere near enough reciprocal love these days as once it might.

BA has become a 'cost down' carrier, managed by accounting fanatics desperate to shave every last percentage point of profit from its revenues, regardless of the reputational damage it does. As a relatively minor case in point, BA's short-haul flights have stopped offering free snacks in economy class and have moved to the easyJet/Ryanair model of selling sandwiches and drinks at vastly inflated prices. Even if they are from Marks & Spencer (a gimmick in Britishness, even if M&S probably source their sarnies from the same supplier as easyJet), a Honey Roast & Farmhouse Cheddar Cheese Sandwich costs £3.90 in the air, whereas you'd pay £2.50 on the ground. Add £2.45 for a cup of tea and you’ve spent more than six quid on something other airlines give away for free. I’m sure most people could do without a snack for an hour or so, but what price a hot drink? Oh, and things get more interesting if you choose to conveniently use your Avios loyalty points instead of the cash you can’t easily get to in your cramped seat: on a two-hour evening flight back from Madrid the other week I bought that sandwich/tea combo, and dispensed with 900 Avios points for the privilege. To put this into perspective, I earned just 1000 Avios flying to and from Zurich with BA a few days later.

While we're on the topic of BA's stingy rewards, there is the Executive Club scheme itself. Progress through the different membership tiers is what drives the repeat business. As you go higher, you gain benefits like lounge access, free seat selection (avoiding the exorbitant charges to reserve a seat you were going to get, anyway) and priority rebooking in the event of flights being cancelled or overbooked. Here, BA has grown ever more light-fingered. That flight from Madrid was the third leg a trip from London to Milan, Milan to Madrid and then back to London. For my trouble I earned just five tier points from the flights from and to London, and ten from the middle flight, despite all three being of identical length and me sitting in economy throughout. The only difference was that the Milan-Madrid journey was with Iberia, BA's sister airline within the IAG group, and should therefore offer no difference to the BA rewards scheme. Another gripe is that occasionally I will take up the offer of a cabin upgrade for cash. Firstly, this doesn’t render any 'cabin bonus' tier points, which seems a little cheap. But there's worse: shortly before my trip to San Jose the other day I saw on the BA iPhone app that the magic 'Upgrade' button was highlighted, informing me that upgrades were possible. I discovered that I could upgrade both outbound and return flights to World Traveller Plus (premium economy) for the princely sum of just under £2,000 - £2,000! I could have booked two complete tickets in that class for that price when I’d made the original booking. So I declined, until the nice man at the check-in desk said that I could move up a cabin for just £270. Bit of a difference, that...

If BA's contemptuous attitude to economy passengers, manifested by a loyalty scheme that barely justifies the word loyalty, isn’t enough, then its planes - the very basis of its existence - are creaking. Not literally, thankfully, but the overwhelming feeling flying BA these days is that it’s not able to keep up with the modern fleets of many of its rivals, especially the Asian and Middle Eastern carriers. Remember my arbitrarily cancelled flight from San Jose? Well, it would have been made on a relatively new Boeing 787 Dreamliner, one of the new class of fuel-efficient, carbon fibre-constructed jets that feature all sorts of innovations to improve passenger comfort and wellbeing.

Picture: Nick Morrish/British Airways

My first experience of a BA Dreamliner wasn’t good - a flight to New Jersey in one of the most cramped economy class cabins I’ve ever experienced. Fair to say, my outbound journey to San Jose the other Sunday was more comfortable and in the larger and newer 787-9 Dreamliner model. Unfortunately, my journey back, rescheduled as a flight from San Francisco, an hour's drive away from San Jose on a Friday afternoon, was on an ageing Boeing 777, on which the crew couldn't switch off the cabin lights, less than ideal on a ten-hour overnight journey (ironically, the lights finally went off when the plane landed, as if all the system needed was a damn good whack). Its one nod to modernity was on-board WiFi, something in which BA has lagged behind many other major carriers for years (I first used it on an American Airlines flight ten years ago...). BA has promised to introduce wireless connectivity on 118 of its long-haul aircraft by this year, but based on my experience (i.e. just two of the ten long-haul flights I’ve made with the airline over the last 12 months), that rollout is taking a while. Getting WiFi into its planes should even be an opportunity for BA, given the premium it can charge for high-bandwidth streaming. The BYOD model could even replace traditional inflight entertainment, as passengers use their iPads and phones, often with better screens than seatback systems, to stream content from Netflix or catch-up players, or watch pre-downloaded programming.

A large part of BA's long-haul fleet is shockingly old, and staying that way. On another trip to Silicon Valley before Christmas I flew on a 20-year-old Boeing 747. Now, there's no doubting the romance of the “Queen of the skies", as aviation buffs call it. There is still a sense of grandeur to clambering aboard the original Jumbo Jet, with that massive, haughty-looking prow, its cockpit windows looking like the eyes of a slightly snooty headmistress, and its massive interior which, before ruthless airline economics took hold, used to feel luxuriously spacious. When it first flew in 1969, the 747 was a technological marvel: a giant ocean liner of the air that could seat well over 400 passengers comfortably in an age when 'jet set' not only evoked who was on board but also a degree of comfort to which even the most lowly economy passenger could enjoy. On top of that it was quick, too, averaging around 500 miles per hour in cruise. Today, though, it’s an anachronism - a four-engined gas-guzzler in an age of twin jet efficiency. BA still stands by the old lady, and although it has slowly started to drawdown its fleet of 747s, it will be at least another five years by the time they've all disappeared, some after more than 25 years' service.

Progressively BA has been refreshing its long-haul fleet, introducing 12 Airbus A380s and 30-odd Dreamliners over the last decade, with a promise of the first of an order of Airbus A350s to come by July this year. This fleet evolution is, however, tectonically slow. Even if the Dreamliner I flew to San Jose on was just three years old, it too lacked WiFi. To me that’s like buying a new car in 2019 without electric windows. Waiting to depart at Heathrow's Terminal 5 is an opportunity to see just how old BA's long-haul fleet is. If you’re lucky you might see one of its A380s (IAG chief executive Willie Walsh has recently said they’d consider buying more of these wonderful, comfortable super jumbos, but Airbus needs to slash its prices first). Emirates, the much admired Middle East carrier has built its fleet strategy around the A380, with more than 100 on its roster with some 142 planned to be in service when deliveries end. Other airlines, like Lufthansa and Qantas, have hedged on their A380 needs like BA. From a passenger point of view it’s a popular type - especially for its comfort, despite the huge size, but its cost always needs balancing, which is why some airlines have been negotiating with Airbus for the smaller A350. Either way, at least they’ve got relatively new fleets overall.

Picture:  British Airways

As BA retires its 747s it will still be left with more than 50 Boeing 777s, by then averaging a lifespan of 22 years. Today, many of these long-haul workhorses show their relative old age, with loose fittings (on my flight back from Dubai in October), or entertainment systems that don’t work and if they do are wedded to screens the size of first-generation TomTom satnavs. Amenities like in-flight entertainment are what relegates BA and the American carriers. The Asian and Middle Eastern airlines are, once again, streets ahead. Even Virgin Atlantic has long been ahead of its great rival BA in this department, offering seatback TVs when BA was still using communal bulkhead screens in its 747 cabins. Virgin’s Upper Class and Premium Economy seats are still on par with the Asian and Gulf airlines, and even in a standard economy seat on Virgin you don’t feel as commoditised as you do with BA.

This begs the question of why I stick with BA. To be honest, I don’t know. Lounge access can be bought or built up through loyalty to other, better airlines. But it’s somewhat shabby that BA should have benefited from my slavish loyalty (and for much longer than the 16 years I’ve been an Executive Club member) and yet the list of woes gets longer with every flight. I’m not alone, either, in feeling this way. In a recent survey for the consumer association Which?, BA came third from bottom, a long way behind carriers such as Singapore, Emirates and even Virgin. BA will point to the improvements it is making to cabin quality as a sign that it is taking the customer experience seriously. But frequent BA passengers beg to differ. Yes, the First and Club World cabins are plush, but step back into World Traveller Plus (premium economy) and World Traveller on long-haul flights, and the experience diminishes somewhat, especially on aircraft where ten economy class seats are now crammed across a row, with those rows appearing significantly tighter for legroom.

Picture: British Airways

Here lies the most vexing aspect of British Airways. An airline seemingly stuck in a vortex of its own making. It still wants to be see as a premium 'flag carrier', and yet its business ethos is stuck somewhere between premium and budget. But BA - which is as margin-minded as any business of course - at least once operated with pricing that you felt was being matched by service quality. At best you'd say it was average today. Yes, its planes get you from A to B with a reasonable degree of punctuality (unless weather events force the airline to just shut down...). and unlike Ryanair or the American carriers, there is still a feeling that you are being somewhat looked after while on board. But there is an overall feeling of decay, of doing more for profit and shareholder dividends than for the paying customer (unless you're paying first or business class prices). Ageing planes and increasingly flimsy rewards for long-term loyalty don't help, either. More importantly, there are simply better airlines out there offering better value for money. No amount of slick marketing, or the claim of making its 100th year "very special" via an "ongoing £6.5bn investment programme to deliver new aircraft, cabins, service and destinations" make a dent in BA's diminishing reputation unless it makes these deliveries sooner, rather than later. The clock is ticking.

Computer says no. Again.

Picture: British Airways

When Robert Louis Stevenson wrote “for to travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive” he probably wasn’t considering flying any distance in economy class. Airlines today are so cost-conscious (i.e. profit-minded) that those utopian days of the proletariat joining the jet-set are now a distant memory as we cram into 10-abreast seats too narrow, and in rows so tight we resemble the enmeshed and entangled bodies of Picasso’s Guernica.

Now, I know what an elitist (and faintly pretentious) thing that is to say, but as my new job will involve frequent international travel, which means flying economy in accordance with responsible company rules (unless upgrades can be scored by a combination of personal cash and general obsequiousness at the gate...), I have a vested interest. And because the majority of my airline loyalty points are with dear old British Airways, I will probably be defaulting to the creaking flag carrier, just to maintain my lounge status. Yes, that’s just how shallow frequent flyers are. Except that BA, once the “world’s favourite airline”, no longer is. In fact, events - largely, it would appear, of their own making - have contrived to make BA anything but.

BA's CEO Alex Cruz will probably be glad to see the back of September: earlier this month he had apologise before the media after it transpired that BA’s website had been hacked - possibly over the course of several days - during which data including customers’ e-mail addresses and credit card information (including critical three-digit CVV codes) was lifted, affecting some 380,000 transactions. Just this last weekend the airline suffered yet another “technical issue with some of our internal systems” (or ‘IT failure’ in clearer parlance) at its hub, Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 5. Once again, this led to horrendous check-in queues and delays of up to two hours (“slight”, according to BA) to flights all over the world as computers managing the entire bag drop-to-boarding process fell over.

Twitter, as ever, bore the brunt of passengers’ frustrations: journalist Andrew Neil vented: “Yet another computer failure at Terminal 5 Heathrow for British Airways. Now regular occurrence. Flights delayed. Usual shambles, not yet on huge scale.” I’d hardly call it “regular”, but BA’s recent history of IT disasters certainly warrants the “shambles” part. “I think somebody at your organisation should press Ctrl+Alt+Delete and just start again,” another tweeted. BA strenuously denied that computer failure was at fault, calling it a “temporary glitch with some of our internal systems”. In other words, an IT failure.

IT problems have been at the core of BA’s worsening reputation in recent years. Having rolled out its new “cost-effective” ‘BA FLY’ IT system in 2015, it has been beset with problems. Employees reported it breaking within only a few weeks of coming onstream, leading to heavy delays at Heathrow and Gatwick. Almost a year later, on 7 July, 2016, the system suffered another failure, causing enormous queues for check-in at Heathrow. The system was to break down twice more that month, and again the following September, causing problems for the airline throughout the world. And then, in May this year, BA suffered its most reputation-damaging outage to date, when an employee error brought down the BA network leaving 75,000 passengers, their luggage and their planes stranded around the world, leading to 670 cancelled flights and a heavy dent in BA’s profits to boot. It’s easy to blame IT failures, but then again, they shouldn’t be happening so often to all the ‘mission-critical’ parts of an airline’s day-to-day operations, like check-in, baggage and boarding. And a multi-million pound retail activity like a national flag carrier's website, shouldn't be getting so comprehensively compromised by hackers. The suspicion is that penny-pinching, as BA obsessively tries to compete with budget airlines like easyJet and Ryanair, is undoing the reputation of an airline that once justifiably claimed to be one of the world’s best.

It’s no accident that most of my frequent flyer miles are with BA, built up mainly over the 17 years I lived abroad and made frequent trips back to the UK. However, over those years, the quality of BA’s service has noticeably eroded, and not just when ‘turning right’ into the supposedly cheap seats. Eager to cram in as many people has possible, even BA’s business class cabin has shrunk, squeezing rows tighter. Business class is where any airline makes its money, but without the high volume of economy passengers, a global carrier like BA would struggle. On short-haul flights, economy passengers now have to pay for snacks. This might be expected on budget airlines, but even when those sandwiches come from Marks and Spencer, it only adds to the cheapening of the BA product.The airline is also somewhat behind on what it provides for long-haul flights: the other week I flew to San Francisco on a 22-year-old Boeing 747. It’s a dear old aircraft - perhaps my favourite widebody still flying - but is definitely showing its age. Even BA's inclusion - finally! - of inflight WiFi on the outbound flight (notably missing on the return trip…) and a refresh of the seats doesn’t mask the fact that other airlines are streets ahead in bringing new planes into their fleets. But even where BA has introduced new aircraft, there are mixed results.

Picture: British Airways

A while ago I flew to Newark in New Jersey from Heathrow in one of BA’s new Boeing 787 Dreamliners, an aircraft much vaunted for innovations to enhance passenger comfort. The reality was that, flying in economy, it was probably the most uncomfortable flight I’ve ever experienced. Similar complaints can be found online of BA’s Dreamliner service between London and San Jose (a return journey on such planes I’ll be taking at the end of October...). Rather than being a sumptuous experience, BA has, it would appear, crammed as many revenue-bearing seats and rows into the 787 as possible. Frankly, I’m not looking forward to it, to the extent that when I repeat the trip to California in December I’ll be booking myself back onto the ageing 747, flying to San Francisco and putting up with a long hour on the 101 freeway to get down to San Jose.

Of course, I have options. Even with corporate travel, there are probably better options with other airlines, but these will almost certainly involve either American carriers (to avoid at all costs) or time- and patience-sapping stopovers where, inevitably, luggage will go missing, to be retrieved usually after the trip is complete. And now I think of it, BA’s history of losing luggage is not one to be proud of.

Whether they admit it or not (and I’m still prepared to defend it), BA has lost its sheen. Middle-eastern airlines like Emirates, Etihad and Qatar, have long eclipsed BA for service, comfort and innovations. Likewise one or two of the Asian carriers, like Singapore and Cathay Pacific. In Europe, I’ve had better experience with Air France, KLM and Lufthansa, carriers of similar or equal historical standing to BA. CNN’s business and travel reporter Richard Quest recently blogged that BA-bashing is “a national pastime”, saying that its status as a national institution put it on a similar par to the BBC or the Church of England for sniping. But having travelled almost exclusively with BA for many, many years, its decline - while not necessarily acute - has been palpable. A spoon fewer here, a more basic meal there - it all adds up. Quest points out that BA is, at least, refreshing its fleet with newer, more efficient planes like the Airbus A380, the Dreamliner and the A350 (which, in the example of the Finnair examples I’ve been on, is extremely comfortable), but if it is just going to squeeze in the maximum number of economy seats as possible, as my experience already of a BA 787 has found, all they are doing is putting Ryanair-standard cabins in the air on premium routes.

Picture: British Airways

Not everyone can fly in business class, and yet those of us flying economy on corporate tickets have often forked out business class pricing, as business travel agents tend to book expensive, fully flexible tickets, rather than the cheap-and-cheerful prices we see as consumers when booking our holidays. I have no problem with budget airlines: easyJet and BA’s own stablemate, Vueling, are perfectly fine for travelling down to the Mediterranean, for work or pleasure. But for long distances, the sort of flights that made BA the national flag carrier to begin with, there’s a sense of non-premium passengers being treated like commodities. I recognise the argument that we, as travellers, want to fly for the least amount of money possible, but I also think that if you want no-frills, you fly with a no-frills carrier (like Norwegian). For what British Airways charges for its longer flights, you’d have thought that passenger comfort - for those of us who ‘turn right’, would be given more attention.

As Quest points out in his post, BA will be 100 years old next year, “a perfect chance to turbo charge the necessary changes”. It was, once, a pioneer, introducing things like premium economy, in which you can ‘almost’ experience business class without paying the high price. Perhaps with a little premium thinking BA could do something about overhauling its currently bruised reputation, both on the ground and in the air.

Snowmageddon out of here!

It was supposed to be a romantic weekend for two. My girlfriend and I visiting Amsterdam, a city I lived in and around for nine and a half years, and just before Christmas. A little sightseeing, some festive shopping, a couple of cosy dinners and then home to start another working week. And even though the weather forecast had talked of snow, being the out-in-the-Midday-sun Brits that we are, we didn’t see this as a reason to worry.

Even on the Sunday morning, as we trudged to breakfast pancakes through blizzard conditions like Captain Scott just popping out for a bit, we were confident that all would be fine later. No, really, this was just a dusting of snow, and that by the time we were meant to leave that afternoon, our modern plane, with its weather radar and automated flight systems, would soar up through the clouds.

It didn’t. As we were getting into the taxi to Schiphol Airport, a text message from British Airways said our flight had been cancelled. No suggestion of how we were now meant to travel, mind, just that it was off, and have a nice day. Tra-la-la. The missive provided a couple of numbers to call: the first didn’t work at all (BA’s Amsterdam call centre) and the second just offered details of a third number, in Newcastle, which of course everyone else was ringing, so you couldn’t get through. For the next 45 minutes I listened to a loop of soothing string music and suggestions of how I could get the best out of my weekend away. Marvellous.

At Schiphol we joined a queue that possibly led to a British Airways person to see whether we could get a new plane, or a hotel room, or a pot of gold or, frankly, anything. I decided to be bold and secured accommodation for the night at the Schiphol Sheraton (no point being inconvenienced for a night and uncomfortable). Eventually, a clearly already-weary BA employee rebooked us onto a new flight departing the next day, and that was all we could do about it. No other options, not even the train.

It was at this point that I begun to wonder where we actually were. This was Amsterdam, a city founded by intrepid international traders and now inhabited by one of the most vibrant, affluent, technology-savvy urban populations on Earth. And yet it was starting to feel like we were struck in the back of beyond in the midst of a crippling natural disaster. Little did we realise just what a crippling natural ”“disaster” we were stuck in for real.

That morning’s photogenic frosting had reduced the seven-runway Schiphol to just one and, worse, London City (where we were supposed to fly back to), Heathrow and other airports in the UK had been closed. Europe - or at least those parts of Europe unable to cope with snow - was grinding to a complete halt. Flights into and out of Schiphol, and again to and from the UK, were being progressively cancelled, leaving planes, crews and passengers in the wrong places at the wrong times. BA alone was said to have 50,000 passengers stranded around the world, which meant more than 300 aircraft were not moving.

The following morning we stoically camped in the Sheraton’s executive lounge, with the Schiphol and BA websites continuing to say our flight was on time, even when most others were being cancelled for a second day running. Ominously, it started snowing again, whiting out the planes we’d been reassuringly watching taxiing for most of the morning. But, thinking we still had a flight to catch we boldly left the comfort of free refreshment and went off to drop our bags at the terminal.

It was almost inevitable that our hubris would be shattered. In the 15-minute walk from bag drop, through an empty security inspection, to the lounge, our rebooked flight had been cancelled. And this time, no 24-hour delay. It would be a full two more days before BA would be able to get us out of Amsterdam. This was no longer a mere inconvenience: our two nights in Amsterdam had extended to five. Yes, there’d be compensation, hotel costs covered and a somewhat miserly £25 a day to keep us fed and watered. But we would now be delayed 72 hours to get home from a city only 230 miles away as the crow flies (were it able to get clearance to take off...).

Now, I know what you’re thinking: why, at this point, didn’t we drive or take the train? Well the first option was nixed by an absence of driving licences (plus the conditions would have been treacherous) and the second by train seats costing hundreds of Euros each disappearing before our very eyes.
By this stage we'd been reduced to the ‘you couldn’t make it up’ state of mental paralysis. We weren’t yet ready to cry and, oddly, not yet ready to lose it, either. Northern Europe had been caught by the weather, and Sunday afternoon’s chaos had snowballed - if I can use that word - with knock-on effects. BA's rebooking algorithms had made a huge assumption that it would be OK for us to turn a basic weekend into a five-day holiday, and that our employers and (in my girlfriend’s case) children wouldn’t have a problem with us being away for three nights longer than planned. But, of course, throughout there was no one to actually speak to, even if we wanted to complain as - guess what? - you couldn’t get through to anyone if you tried.

Luckily, got yet another hotel booked - our third of the trip (and, as it turned out, a rather nice one) - and headed off to the lengthy taxi queue where, as if trying to make a point, the weather conditions seemed to worsen further as we snaked slowly towards a ride back into Amsterdam.

So how does this story end? It is now Wednesday and we’re in the British Airways business lounge at Schiphol, checked in for a flight back to London this afternoon. The snow is clearing and it is drizzling, but the temperature has gone up and Schiphol has declared itself fully operational again. Life returns to normal.

Frankly, I’m amazed that both of us have remained sane throughout this experience. We've repeatedly reminded each other - and our Facebook friends - that there really is not a lot we can do other than sit it out. Our respective employers have also said the same, which has been wonderful of them (lucky that we have jobs with such flexibility). But, really.

Travel, as I'm prone to observe, seems to bring out the worst in people. But sometimes it brings out the worst in travel. Situations like ours are where people go mad and start lashing out. Twitter provides a somewhat healthy outlet for venting, as a search of the word “Schiphol” revealed. Inevitably, though, the poor employees staffing airport desks have taken the brunt of frustrations. To be honest, you can’t blame some complainants, as missed business meetings, college lectures, family gatherings and everyday normality is turned upside down by a transport infrastructure, that we normally use without blinking an eye, comes to a halt.

Those of us of a more rational composure will accept that snow is simply Mother Nature at work, even if mankind has done much to make severe weather “events” more severe. And we will accept that for all those hundreds of days in the year when planes take off and land like clockwork, once in a while it will all go Pete Tong, and there’s absolutely nothing you can do.

If there is one observation to offer, however, it is to British Airways: the blame for Sunday’s 'Snowmageddon' could hardly be placed at the airline’s feet (no - that must surely be shared between whoever didn’t order enough snowploughs and the weather forecasters who didn’t see such a huge dumping coming...), but there’s plenty BA must improve upon when these situations occur. It was only a few months before that an IT outtage left 75,000 of its passengers stranded throughout the world, and the once proud British flag-carrier’s reputation has taken a pounding ever since, by everything from shrinking seats and charging for food on short-haul flights, to its ageing aircraft fleet and making passengers with the cheapest tickets board those planes last.

BA’s low-cost rivals have their faults (Ryanair’s pilot shortage catastrophe might even make this week’s difficulties pale), but the absence of true customer service since Sunday seems to point to a threadbare organisation more concerned with short-term profit margins rather than long-term sustainability built on a quality product and the customer loyalty that deserves. And while BA’s chief executive Alex Cruz has promised a multi-billion pound investment in much needed new aircraft, as well as facilities like an improved business class and in-flight WiFi to help it catch up with its biggest competitors, this will do very little to repair the company’s reputation today. Because issues like paying for a sandwich are trivial when you can’t even get through to a helpline to get on a plane to begin with.

I’ve worked in corporate PR for many years and know that the first rule of crisis communication is to engage your stakeholders properly. If that means calling in every single employee on a Sunday to man the phones or hand out coffee and snacks at the airport, that’s what you’ve got to do. You can’t rely on automated text messages and bots rebooking people onto flights three days after they were due to depart as customer engagement if that customer isn’t being informed of the whys, hows, and whens. In a crisis you communicate and communicate often. Because if you don’t, an information vacuum  develops leading to frustration and, in the case of travel - rarely the most placid of human conditions - palpable anger.

Lessons should have been learned from the May IT meltdown, when passengers complained about the lack of information as to what was going on, either collectively or in individual situations. A cursory text message may be a modern way of saying getting out information quickly, but if the follow-up process falls down, the engagement is pointless. Just as airports should have been better prepared for the snow, airlines should have been better prepared by putting staff on standby. Just two people on BA’s information desk at Schiphol on Sunday wasn’t enough (a problem replicated throughout the airport with other airlines), and although Schiphol employees were handing out bottled water and bars of chocolate on Monday, there was no such comfort on the day it all went wrong. 

Perhaps, though, the worst lapse was in something that shouldn’t have cost a penny: an airline acknowledging that lives had been disrupted, that people wouldn’t be returning home to families or that business appointments would be ruined, that what should have been the simplest of excursions had been turned on its head.

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.