4136 x 5920 px | 35 x 50,1 cm | 13,8 x 19,7 inches | 300dpi
Ubicazione:
Prestwick Airport, Ayr, Scotland. United Kingdom.
Altre informazioni:
The 747 was born from the explosion of air travel in the 1960s. The era of commercial jet transportation, led by the enormous popularity of the Boeing 707, had revolutionized long distance travel and made possible the concept of the "global village." Boeing had already developed a study for a very large airplane while bidding on a US military contract for a huge airlifter. Boeing lost the contract to Lockheed's C-5 Galaxy but came under pressure from its most loyal airline customer, Pan Am, to develop a giant passenger plane that would be over twice the size of the 707. In 1966 Boeing proposed a preliminary configuration for the airliner, to be called the 747. Pan Am ordered 25 of the initial 100 series. The original design was a full-length double-decker fuselage. Issues with evacuation routes caused this idea to be scrapped in favor of a wide-body design. At the time, it was widely thought that the 747 would be replaced in the future with an SST (supersonic transport) design. In a shrewd move, Boeing designed the 747 so that it could easily be adapted to carry freight. Boeing knew that if and when sales of the passenger version dried up (see below regarding the future sales of the 747), the plane could remain in production as a cargo aircraft. The cockpit was moved to a shortened upper deck so that a nose cone loading door could be included, thus creating the 747's distinctive "bulge". The supersonic transports, including the Concorde and Boeing's never-produced 2707, never lived up to expectations, such planes being too expensive to operate profitably at a time when fuel prices were soaring, and also there were difficulties of operating such aircraft due to regulations regarding flying supersonic over land. The 747 was expected to become obsolete after sales of 400 units. But the 747 outlived many of its critics and production passed the 1, 000 mark in 1993. The expected slow-down in sales of the passenger version in favour of the freighter model has only been rea
