Good riddance- with any luck the post COVID-19 world will be one with less reliance on air travel for the atmosphere's sake. Especially in the numbers that once made airplane designers believe the 747 and A380 could be economically viable.
Boeing quietly pulls plug on the 747, closing era of jumbo jets
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Re: Boeing quietly pulls plug on the 747, closing era of jumbo jets
#12The 747 is humanity's greatest achievement. Air travel is the confluence of engineering, policy and governance (the heyday of the FAA/NTSB and how we got to the point where air travel is this safe), and the systems engineering that get aircraft, people, and baggage to so many different places. What the Boeing 747, and only the Boeing 747, has is true artistic value, with a profile evoking Botticelli or Rubens.
I agree that the 747 is a work of art and may represent the best we can accomplish in air travel (with regards to safety, reliability, and operating at scale) and reminds me of my favorite IdleWords article, "Web Design - The First 100 Years"[0] which talks about the unbounded optimism of the 1970s when moon vacations were still in the public imagination.
But the 747 was good enough and collectively we really didn't need to go supersonic or into orbit (or at least, most of the world couldn't afford it)
The article makes the pivot that web technology is no different -- that there might not be a supersonic quantum AI coming down the pipeline, that the tech we have now might be pretty much as good as it gets. Makes me feel less guilty about wanting to use old reliable tools and not follow the hype around smart contracts and adversarial agents. A relational database with some CGI scripts is going to be just as useful in 100 years as it is today.
[0] https://idlewords.com/talks/web_design_first_100_years.htm
Re: Boeing quietly pulls plug on the 747, closing era of jumbo jets
#13As I understand it, 4 engine planes are less economical and are now unnecessary due to the reliability of 2 engine planes. I could see the last 747s serving as great monuments purchased by Billionaires to add to their collections. No 737 Max is going to give you a spiral staircase. I can't help but see this as a problem though, as we converge on a single type of aircraft it moves more and more to winner take all for the design.
Re: Boeing quietly pulls plug on the 747, closing era of jumbo jets
#14Re: Boeing quietly pulls plug on the 747, closing era of jumbo jets
#15I know it's not the most important thing, but I feel that 747s are easily the prettiest passenger airplane in the sky right now. Going to miss the variety they provided at the airport.
Indeed. There hasn't been much variety since the 90s. 727 thru 777, A300-A340, MD-11s, MD-80/90 family, DC-9/10s, L1011s.
Re: Boeing quietly pulls plug on the 747, closing era of jumbo jets
#16Good riddance- with any luck the post COVID-19 world will be one with less reliance on air travel for the atmosphere's sake. Especially in the numbers that once made airplane designers believe the 747 and A380 could be economically viable.
If you need to do air travel, these larger airplanes are better then smaller airplanes per passenger.
Re: Boeing quietly pulls plug on the 747, closing era of jumbo jets
#17[deleted]
Re: Boeing quietly pulls plug on the 747, closing era of jumbo jets
#18The last day of 737 will come sometime soon too.
The 737 is pretty versatile though. It's limitation is capacity and perhaps range. Range has been improved over the years allowing a lot of medium-range thin-capacity flights. The 737, 777 and 787 combined have eliminated the need for the 747, 757 and 767.
The classics have mostly or entirely been retired, with the most common models being the -700 and -800. The family has enough flexibility to evolve in range without needing a completely new family. The 737 still has its place as the short to medium haul work horse, so I don't see it going anywhere for a long time.
Re: Boeing quietly pulls plug on the 747, closing era of jumbo jets
#19Good riddance- with any luck the post COVID-19 world will be one with less reliance on air travel for the atmosphere's sake. Especially in the numbers that once made airplane designers believe the 747 and A380 could be economically viable.
If you need to do air travel, these larger airplanes are better then smaller airplanes per passenger.
The lifecycle impact of a 747 is much worse than a 737 or an Embraer 145: https://escholarship.org/content/qt6m5865v5/qt6m5865v5.pdf
Regardless of the plane size however, there's no getting around planes depositing pollution in the upper atmosphere is worse than we thought and cannot be thought of in the same way as emissions from a train or power plant: https://www.newscientist.com/article/2207886-it-turns-out-pl...
Re: Boeing quietly pulls plug on the 747, closing era of jumbo jets
#20The old order changeth to make way for the new: the era of Starships.