Dear Fellow Memory Excavators,
The month is almost over, and, rudely, I haven’t taken the time, until now, to write a 747 obituary. Like any aircraft and travel fanatic, I dearly love this majestic beast, and was sad to see the last one delivered a few weeks ago. Since the rollout, here’s what I’ve been thinking about in terms of historical lessons and big picture context for this much-loved program:
1. Technology is easily misunderstood. The 747 airframe gets all the accolades. But the 747’s size didn’t mean very much. Remember Robert Crandall’s maxim: nobody went bankrupt flying a plane that was too small. Rather, range and economics were the 747’s main virtues, and these were great because of P&W’s JT9D engine, which was the world’s first commercial high bypass turbofan. High bypass engines represented a major step change in economics, which helps explain why 747 demand trailed off rapidly as soon as other airframes with the same engine technology (DC-10, L-1011, A300) arrived a few years later. Yet did anyone shed a tear when the last JT9D was delivered? I think not. In fact, I did a web search…nobody noticed or cared.
2. Similarly, technology’s impact on the world is often overrated. Every post-rollout 747 homage dutifully posited that the 747 changed the world. Yet in 1960-1970, world airline traffic grew 309% (from 98 billion to 303 billion Revenue Passenger Miles). In the decade after the 747 (and the other widebodies) arrived, 1970-1980, it grew 214% (from 303 billion to 647 billion RPMs). The 747’s superior intercontinental economics were definitely good for the industry. But as a market stimulant, it doesn’t show up in the numbers. These were far more impacted by macroeconomic changes (oil prices, slowing global GDP growth, etc.).
3. Instantly disruptive technology is an industry myth. The 747’s high bypass engines were indeed great. But aircraft with low bypass engines, such as the 727, stayed in demand for many years afterwards. Heck, even the intercontinental plane the 747 should have killed instantly, Boeing’s own 707, with its low bypass JT3D engines, lingered on for 14 years after its would-be executioner arrived. The last commercial 707 delivery was in 1984.
4. Good technology evolves over time. Too often, technology is viewed as a sudden invention that has an immediate impact. “This changes everything!,” people often say about Segways, eVTOLs, quantum computers, or AI chatbots. And everything doesn’t change, of course. Instead, technology matures and adapts, and interacts with other societal changes. Consider the 747-400, which didn’t enter service until two decades after the original 747 arrived. It was overwhelmingly the most important 747. A total of 694 747-400s were built, around the same as the total of 724 747-100s, -200s, and -300s that came before. Of the final total of 1,574 747s built, 44%, were -400 variants.
The -400’s impressive success relative to its predecessors was partly because of market growth, but to a greater extent, it was because the -400 offered significant improvements over previous models. Specifically, it was the first true transpacific jetliner. Before then, you needed to stop in Alaska or Japan, or both. My first flight to Asia was in 1991 in a Cathay Pacific -400. I had flown on 747s before then, but the idea of just getting on a jet in California and flying straight to Hong Kong seemed incredible to me. Hong Kong seemed pretty incredible to me, too.
5. Technology exists in a larger context. The -400’s success was also driven by global changes. The -400, and the 747 in general, might not have been a success if it weren’t for the Asian economic development miracle of the 1990s. The transpacific -400, helped foster and accelerate this miracle. It wasn’t just the massive increase in travel to and from Asia (backpackers like me, and businesspeople, too). It was also cargo and trade. As my co-Managing Director Kevin Michaels noted in his PhD dissertation, the rise of Asia’s semiconductor industry, particularly in Taiwan, was aided and abetted by the 747 and other cargo jets. In fact, Asia’s transition from manufacturing cheap stuff to manufacturing high-value products was also facilitated by widebody cargo aircraft, especially the 747. Kevin points out that air cargo carries just 1% of world trade by weight, but in the 1990s it carried 40% by value.
Interestingly, if the original 747’s arrival was incredibly poorly timed (slowing global growth and skyrocketing fuel costs), the 747-400 arrived at an impossibly perfect moment. I remember starting my career in the late 1980s, watching the thermal paper fax machine deliver news about large -400 orders from unlikely parts of the world. The big orders were no longer coming from Pan Am, British Airways, or Lufthansa. All of the sudden, jet exports to South Korea, China, Thailand, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia, and of course Singapore and Japan represented the only really bright spot in US manufacturing. In 1991, my first aircraft production line visit was the 747 in Everett, and all those brightly colored exotic tails promised an exciting new world. Oh, The Places You’ll Go!
6. The future ain’t what it used to be (technology). Not to be a downer here, but fast forward 32 years, and perhaps the world is a bit less promising (and not just because I’m no longer in my twenties). The 747’s replacement, the 777-X, looks like a good jet, development issues notwithstanding. But the anticipated performance numbers (range, payload, speed, even fuel burn) don’t look radically different from the 747-8, if you adjust for two engines. The same is true for Airbus’s slightly smaller A350-1000. Basically, if you took a 50-year-old airframe and substituted two modern engines for four older ones, you’d probably get about the same results. That’s what an aeronautical technology plateau looks like.
7. The future ain’t what it used to be (market). Per above, when the 747 arrived world air travel was 303 billion RPMs. At its 2019 peak (which we’re almost back to, post-COVID) it was 5,525 billion RPMs. So, by the time the 777-X enters service in the mid 2020s, the system will be around 2000% larger. Yet again, the 747 and 777-X are roughly the same size. Bold bets on future growth are simply not a thing anymore.
Yours, Until The Last 747 Is Retired…Twenty Years After The Last A380 Is Retired,
Richard Aboulafia