It’s the end of an era. The Queen of the Skies has had a great run, making its first flight more than half a century ago. But sadly, production of the iconic Boeing 747 will come to an end in a couple of years.
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According to a Bloomberg report, the last remaining variant of the Boeing 747 is taking no more orders and the final unit will be delivered in two years. The 747-8, the longest and largest version of the plane Boeing has ever made, hasn’t sold a passenger spec plane in some time with all of the recent jumbo jets being the cargo variants. The last passenger order was actually for the new Air Force One which was delivered in 2017.
It should be no surprise that the Boeing 747 has been feeling marked pressure in recent years. The airline industry has been moving towards smaller, dual-engine planes as it migrates passenger traffic from the hub and spoke model to the direct model. The end of the Airbus A380 was already announced and no new orders taken, having completely undersold over its short lifetime.
The hub and spoke model posited that the most efficient method of moving large amounts of people around is to have large centralised hub airports that offers as connecting location for all the various destinations. The most notable modern example would be Dubai or Doha, with the large middle-eastern airlines being the connecting link between the east and the west.
This is now changing to the direct model. The newer aircraft, like Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner, offer much better efficiency and importantly, much longer range. This means airlines can now service routes that don’t have the massive demand that the hub airports offer – think of Belfast to Boston versus London to New York. The smaller aircraft are easier to fill with passengers and the improved efficiency means it’s cheaper to run for the airlines.
So, unfortunately for many of us, the era of jumbo jets are coming to an end. The first A380 models are already being scrapped for parts. And the Boeing 747 aircraft will also soon follow suit. A sad day, indeed.
