First Commercial FlightPan Am's February 1970 timetable, the first listing 747 service, celebrated the new wide body jet on its cover. The 747's landing in London was commemorated in a watercolor by John McCoy, part of a series celebrating historic first flights by Pan Am aircraft.
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The 747 entered service on January 22, 1970, on Pan Am's New York–London route; the flight had been planned for the evening of January 21, but engine overheating made the original aircraft (Clipper Young America, registration N735PA) unusable.
By the mid-1970s, Eastern Airlines was the world's biggest airline outside the Soviet Union's monolithic Aeroflot, with an apt slogan in The Wings Of Man and an astronaut CEO (Frank Borman, Apollo 8).
The 747 and 777 continue to be popular members of the British Airways fleet, with a number of cargo airlines also operating the 747-8F and 777F into British airports. Three UK airlines operate the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, TUI, British Airways and Virgin Atlantic.
Built in 1967 to produce the mammoth jet, it remains the world's largest manufacturing plant according to Boeing. But after five decades, customer demand for the 747 eroded as Boeing and Airbus (AIR.PA) developed more fuel efficient two-engine widebody planes.
Like the even bigger Airbus A380 (in the foreground), the 747 no longer meets the economic requirements of airlines that prefer long-haul, dual-engine aircraft such as the A350 or the Boeing 777 and 787. In the past year, there were only 20 or so outstanding orders for the 747, all of them for freight carriers.
The planes are due for delivery in 2024 as part of a $3.9 billion contract. Boeing's 777X, its latest passenger plane model and projected replacement for the 747, is set for delivery in 2025.