Boeing 747: The Original Jumbo Jet

this video is brought to you by surf shark safety and security online are super important and you can protect yourself online with surfshark get 83 off and three months for free through the link in the description below now today's one is all about another airplane and i know there are some people in the comments that are like simon i thought this channel was about mega projects you can't just do every plane to which i would say to you well go and try build a boeing 747 and tell me it's not a magic mega project all right let's get into it [Music] today we'll be speaking about one of the most impactful successful and massive commercial airplanes ever built the boeing 747. there are plenty of other planes out there with more intriguing stories about their failures their technical specs or some other dramatic feature yet none has become quite as iconic and recognizable as the 747. it's remained relevant in the ever-changing airline industry for the last 50 years earning the nickname the queen of the skies and it isn't likely to relinquish that title for some time to come and i know people say simon the a380 came along and it's so big it's so much bigger it's so much better but really it's not as iconic is it the boeing 747 began as an idea for a completely separate non-commercial airline in 1963 the united states military determined a need for a new airplane large enough to carry massive loads of cargo for long distances a classification which they preemptively called cx heavy logistics systems the requirements called for a load capacity of 81 600 kilograms and a speed of mach 0.75 which is about 800 kilometers an hour or 500 miles per hour it also had to have an unfueled range of 9 300 kilometers and a payload of 52 200 kilograms they also requested for the payload bay to be 5.18 meters wide 4.11 meters high and 30 meters long with access through doors at the front and the rear furthermore the military wanted to limit the plane to four engines so for such a large craft it required a stronger engine with a better fuel economy they sent a request for proposal to several manufacturers across the country and it was separated into two categories the airframe and the engine this rfp or request for proposal was met with enthusiasm from a handful of companies and after an initial limited proposal the u.s government granted study contracts to three airframe and two engine manufacturers the three airframe companies were lockheed douglas and boeing while general electric and pratt and whitney were chosen for the engine following the second round of proposals the us government selected designs by lockheed and general electric to build the c5 galaxy which would go on to become the largest military plane ever built now while boeing was working on their design for the project the president of pan-american world airways juan tripp reached out to his partners at boeing and requested that they look into developing an airline with twice the capacity of the current commercial passenger planes at the time the most common passenger planes were the boeing 707 and the douglas dc-8 both of which played an important role in bringing air travel to the masses but were only able to carry about passengers trip saw an opportunity to reduce costs and therefore increase profits by condensing the flights of many small planes into fewer large planes furthermore as the masses adopted air travel the american government and airlines realized that their infrastructure could not support the demand for air travel not only did the increased demand lead to large crowds of people in the airport but it led to crowded runways as small plane after small plane sat in line for takeoff trips were an opportunity to correct this problem by simply building bigger planes thus fitting more passengers clearing up space at airports and streamlining their logistics and operations it's unclear whether or not tripp was aware of boeing's designs for the military cx-hls but the people at boeing recognize the clear crossover of that design they quickly assigned the project the number 747 and built a team led by an engineer called joe sutter [Music] sutter worked closely with the team at pan am and the determination was made to build a passenger plane that could be converted into a cargo plane pan am boeing and most of the authorities in the airline industry believed that supersonic air travel was the future and that a sub-ssd plane like the 747 would not have a long life as a passenger plane of course that didn't exactly turn out to be the case as many of you learned from our video on concorde or also the fact that you've almost certainly never been on a supersonic commercial airliner however none of that really made a difference because it's what people believed at the time and therefore the 747 was designed to meet the cargo requirements of the military rfp throughout the design process of the rfp the consensus among the airframe manufacturers was that the simplest way to adhere to the cx-hls standards was to turn the nose of the plane into a raisable door and to move the cockpit up and back on a raised level above the plane's main cabin in april 1966 pan am essentially bankrolled the early stages of the 747 project by pre-ordering 25 craft for a total of 525 million which is just over 4.2 billion dollars in 2020 money so they had quite a lot of faith in this the signing of the purchase agreement was marked by a ceremony attended by the people at boeing and pan am at which tripp gave a grand speech which included the claim that the 747 would be a great weapon for peace competing with intercontinental missiles for mankind's destiny due to this early order and their role in conceiving the 747 pan am was allowed to play a key role in the design of the airplane which was not a normal role for airlines to play at that time boeing decided to stick with the government's request to make the plane a four engine airliner which required a much more powerful engine than previously existed while ge was given the government contract to design the engine for the c5 galaxy they had no plans to make the engine available commercially as such boeing and pan am teamed up with pratt and whitney to design the jt-9d a high bypass turbofan engine that delivered twice the power of earlier turbo jets with just a third of the fuel consumption shortly after the signing of the deal boeing agreed to deliver the first 747 to pan am in late 1969 giving them 28 months to complete the design and build the first of these megastructures while that may seem like quite a lot of time to build a single airplane it was actually about 30 shorter than the normal time to build such a structure as such a unique commercial airplane would require extensive quality assurance testing in order to pass federal aviation administration faa inspections the timeline was so demanding that the group of engineers and builders that worked on the project were dubbed the incredibles for their extreme dedication to delivering the plane on time as boeing approached the beginning of the build process they determined that there wasn't a large enough building anywhere in the world to actually assemble the 747 so they began a nationwide search for a new construction headquarters after considering dozens of cities across the united states they settled on a small town 30 miles north of seattle washington called everett boeing proceeded to build the everett plants which though completed in 1969 still holds the title of the world's largest building by volume at 13 385 378 square meters and it covers nearly 400 000 square meters the factory was such an immense project that the first markup of the 747 was built and completed within its walls before actual construction had finished on the building's roof the first completed 747 rolled out of the massive hangar doors in everett on september 30th 1968 with international press and representatives from 26 airlines from all across the world all who had already placed orders for these 747s clearly pan am weren't the only airline who felt there was value in this massive passenger airplane the first official test flight took place on february 9 1969 with jack waddle and brian weigel at the controls and but it went near perfect while the plane clearly had the ability to fly that had been proven rather easily the final obstacle was approval from the faa so that it was able to carry passengers this required the ability to evacuate every passenger from the plane in less than 90 seconds the initial test of the evacuation procedure took over 150 seconds which is actually pretty impressive considering that there were 560 people on the plane though many of them were injured in the process still this failed certification meant that boeing had a lot more work to do on the aircraft's interior several months later in december of 69 the 747 received its faa airworthiness certificate and the plane was delivered to pan am it was christened by the first lady of the united states pat nixon on january 19 1970 at dulles airport near washington dc in a ceremony that included spraying red white and blue water all over and around the plain the first flight was set to take place on january 21st but it was delayed by a day as one of the plane's engines overheated and a backup plane had to be brought in that isn't exactly a huge vote of confidence in this new plane still the first flight it went smoothly as 352 passengers were carried safely from new york to london and in about 20 minutes less time than a typical airliner they weren't messing around on that first flight you could have just done a short up you know over land to somewhere else in the u.s it's like no no let's fly across the atlantic perhaps the most absurd details about the design and development process at boeing are the massive financial burden of the project though they received orders for 747s from 26 airlines boeing were up to their neck in debt at the time of completion to the point that several executives at boeing felt that the company would go under if the 747 was not a massive success by late 1969 boeing's total debt surpassed 2 billion or 14 billion dollars in today's money they also set a record at that time for the largest amount ever owed to banks at 1.2 billion or about 8.5 billion dollars in modern currency of course these numbers are quite small compared to the debt the modern companies take on but in the 1960s this was just unheard of and just before we continue with the video something that you should have definitely heard of and that's surf shark now if you're using the internet well you are you're watching youtube right now so i know that and well you've probably also got information that you'd rather remain personal well let me tell you something the internet is kind of weird place there are people out there who just want to ruin your day they want to take your details they want to steal your identity and 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the link in the description below or use my code mega [Music] the boeing 747 is considered the first long-range wide-bodied passenger airliner despite the fact that it was meant to be quickly transitioned into a full-time cargo plane while tripp the pan am exec that conceived of the plane requested twice the capacity of the 707 the plane's dimensions were directly influenced by the requirements of containerized shipping and the cx-hls requirements and this led to some distinct design features that stuck with the plane throughout its history while there have been many variations of the 747 the features discussed in this section are specific for its first iteration which was called the 747 100. first the door at the nose forced the cockpit upwards above the main cabin of the plane the initial plan was to extend this upper deck for the entire length of the plane but it became immediately clear that a plane with two full-length passenger-filled decks would not be able to pass faa certification so the upper deck was shrunk to only include four to six rows of seats this shortened up a deck led to the signature hump on the front end of the plane's spine which is stuck with the 747 through every version of the plane another key feature of the 747 is its dramatic wings the wings sweep backwards at an angle of 37.5 degrees from the body a design conductive for fast efficient cruise speeds this allowed for incredibly large wings with 511 square meters of area which is larger than an nba basketball court while limiting the wingspan to 60 meters this meant that the 747 could access existing hangars and airports wouldn't be required to build new larger hangars to support a single type of aircraft the plane's body is 17.7 meters long from nose to tail and 6.5 meters across the maximum takeoff weight for the 747-100 is 333.4 tons about three times that of the original 707. this weight accounts for everything from passengers and their luggage to cargo and fuel making it one of the main determinants in the success of the plane the fuel capacity is 48 445 us gallons and its maximum speed is mach 0.92 although typical cruising speeds are around 907 kilometers an hour this gave it a range of 4 620 nautical miles which is 8560 kilometers when fully loaded with passengers and luggage giving it an additional thousand miles over the 707 and other common planes from that time one of the main concerns about the 747 was that it would be too large for standard length runways at high traffic airports but its triple slotted flaps allowed it to take off in only about 10 700 feet which is about 3.2 kilometers as for the interior the original 747 had a capacity of 366 passengers and included the innovative though now widely adopted to aisle design this meant that in economy seating the rows were arranged in a 3-4-3 formation and in first class a 2-3-2 formation the upper deck was designed with a single aisle with 3-3 rows in economy and 2-2 rows in first class [Applause] [Music] [Applause] by late 1969 boeing had delivered the first four 747s to pan am and total orders for the aircraft reached 198. by the end of 1970 its first year in operation boeing had delivered 96 747s to airline customers around the world orders for the airplane briefly slowed in the early 1970s due to a recession with only seven orders being placed in 1971 but the backlog of orders meant that boeing was able to continually produce them with regularity over the next 30 years boeing built and delivered an average of 41 new 747s every single year during its early years boeing estimated that about half of the purchases were driven by the extreme capacity and payload of the plane while the other half were based on the aircraft's long range despite its capabilities though the 747 was not always the most profitable airplane for commercial passenger airlines the 747 had the lowest operating cost per seat of any aircraft in the world when it was filled to maximum capacity but it was rarely filled to maximum capacity when at just 70 percent of its passenger limit the fuel cost remained at 95 percent of that capacity this led airlines to raise the cost of seeds to make up for all of the empty space domestically the 747 became less relevant as a passenger plane as more american airports reached a size that could accommodate long-haul international flights at the time of its introduction international flights filtered through a small number of massive airports in large cities and airlines were able to fill the 747s for long flights and then send their customers to smaller airplanes for domestic flights however airlines discovered that flyers don't enjoy long layovers in crowded airports huge surprise so as more international airports were built it became more common to fly smaller more fuel-efficient aircrafts to a wider number of destinations american airlines could no longer justify flying half full or half empty fuel-guzzling aircraft so frequently so they transitioned their 747s into strictly cargo planes still the plane remains popular in international markets where the smaller number of large international airports meant that high-capacity planes made more economic sense so despite its expensive shortcomings boeing continued to receive orders up until 2018 when they announced that they were no longer going to take orders for the 747. altogether boeing has built and delivered 1556 of the aircraft over the last 50 years making it the most popular wide-bodied airplane ever sold nowadays there are 462 747s in operation though many airlines including british airways its largest passenger operator have announced that they will phase out their 747s in favor of more fuel-efficient options still many freight airlines do continue to utilize the 747 to deliver time-sensitive goods all around the world one of the ways that the 747 has remained relevant for so long is that it has been constantly improved and updated over the years with at least 21 different versions produced through the decades the original 747 is the 100 and some of the most popular variants include the 200b the 400 the 400f and now the 8f while we could list the impressive specifications of each of these aircrafts the most interesting variants are those that aren't quite as popular and instead serve a specialized purpose the best example of this is arguably the most famous and specialized plane in the world and that's of course air force one since 1990 the president of the united states has flown exclusively in two custom-made 747-200bs though it's referred to in the air force as the bc25a in january 2015 the air force announced that the two aircrafts which were built in 1980 would be replaced by customized versions of the 7478i which would be called vc-25b according to air force secretary at the time the 8i is the only aircraft manufactured in the united states that when fully missionized meets the necessary capabilities established to execute the presidential support mission despite the fact that it's still in use to this day the legacy of the 747 has been set in stone for several decades staying relevant for 50 years is difficult for just about anything nowadays let alone in the high-tech aviation industry the failure of other innovations in air travel like supersonic airliners shows just how difficult it is to innovate in such extreme ways though it also plays a role in maintaining the relevance of successful aircraft like the 747 the queen of the skies may not be the fastest the largest or the coolest airplane ever built but it might well be the most iconic so i really hope you found that video interesting if you did smash that like button if you think this isn't a mega project after all of that well smash that dislike button subscribe oh if you've got suggestions for future mega projects let me know in the comments below and thank you for watching you

Channel: Megaprojects

Views: 414,801

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Id: SX_IWc9Zi94

Length: 19min 25sec (1165 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 16 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Simon Whistler is not the greatest source on... anything. If you guys are really interested in this subject, check out this bbc documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Ht1ogFUBLc

Learning about our Space exploration efforts and the 747 were the two first times I felt genuinely patriotic