It is no coincidence that they call him Queen of the Skies, the “Queen of Heaven”. It is frankly difficult to single out an airplane more iconic, legendary and at the same time revolutionary than the Boeing 747, the Jumbo Jets which in January 1970 – when the first specimen entered service with the Pan Am colors – inaugurated a new era for air transport: a giant of the skies that has entered the collective imagination more than any other aircraft, not only for its record dimensions but also for the role of absolute protagonist in that technological transition which, with its social, economic and even political implications, has led the world to become ever more “small” and interconnected. And yet, after more than half a century of honorable career, the time has come for the 747 too to hand over the baton to aircraft more suited to dealing with the transition underway and the challenges (energy, but not only) of the third millennium. In recent days, with a press release that certainly brought a lot of fans to tears, Boeing announced the exit from the assembly lines of the last of the Jumbos, number 1574. A production that began way back in 1967 thus comes to an end, but not the career of the most famous of commercial jets: the many examples still in service will transport people and things for many years to come. Retirement, for this legend of the skies, is fortunately still far away.
Boeing 747: history, the most famous versions
