How long will the 747 fly?

Jim K

Jim K

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All the news about the last 747 being delivered made me think someone should start a pool about what will be the last one flying. Maybe they'll be like the dc-3 and the b-52 and live forever with some updated powerplants along the way? I'm betting the last one will outlive me unless the environmentalists shut them down.

Another question is, what's the replacement? I assume Atlas, FedEx, UPS, etc. will want some new freighters at some point. What will they be?
 
They will live as long as parts are available.
 
Long time. Lots of old cargo still flies. Not as long as the DC3. I would find it hard to believe that in 60 years someone buys an old 747 just to have. It's not exactly a warbird.
 
Boeing has freighters based on 737, 767, 777, and 787 platforms.

I love the 747 but the fact is that Boeing alone has a lot of replacements available for a freight company to choose from. All major manufacturers do, too. The revenue from freight business has always been vital to airline businesses, and therefore airplane manufacturers, too.

Fear not! Something will be modified or built from scratch to address the lucrative freight hauling market.

-Skip
 
kaiser said:
Long time. Lots of old cargo still flies. Not as long as the DC3. I would find it hard to believe that in 60 years someone buys an old 747 just to have. It's not exactly a warbird.
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Not to mention FAR more expensive.
 
VC25Bs are just about to get delivered, so probably a while longer. These won't have the air-to-air refueling option.
 
kaiser said:
Long time. Lots of old cargo still flies. Not as long as the DC3. I would find it hard to believe that in 60 years someone buys an old 747 just to have. It's not exactly a warbird.
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DC3s will probably still be flying after old jets are parked forever. The thing is, there is nothing about any of those old piston airplanes that you can't reproduce fairly simply. Piston engines aren't that hard.

Turbine engines and some of the associated systems that go with big jets, especially newer ones? Fly by wire anything? Yeah, that's not something that you can just 3D print in your bedroom or machine in your shop. It's ultimately a good chunk of why the Concordes are parked for good now but B-29s (granted only two of them) are still flying.

But I see 747s flying for a long time to come. As said, as long as there are parts.
 
I know next to nothing about the "big iron". I assumed that the 747 being a fairly old design would be mostly hydraulic? Or have the newer models integrated more computers beyond just the avionics?

Did a bit of googling and was surprised to learn the 777xf is nearly as big as the 747 and a lot of the cargo companies are already switching over.
 
Ted said:
Fly by wire anything? Yeah, that's not something that you can just 3D print in your bedroom or machine in your shop. It's ultimately a good chunk of why the Concordes are parked for good now but B-29s (granted only two of them) are still flying.
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The Concorde flight hardware was a tour de force of TTL. Much of the computing was done with stacked double NAND gate ICs, similar to the configuration of the Apollo guidance computer. Cheap and simple. The economics of flying supersonic is what killed them. One hundred seats stuffed in a small tube turned out to be a dead end.
 
Skip Miller said:
Boeing has freighters based on 737, 767, 777, and 787 platforms.

I love the 747 but the fact is that Boeing alone has a lot of replacements available for a freight company to choose from. All major manufacturers do, too. The revenue from freight business has always been vital to airline businesses, and therefore airplane manufacturers, too.

Fear not! Something will be modified or built from scratch to address the lucrative freight hauling market.

-Skip
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Don’t forget the 757 as well, lots of freight moving around on that airframe. And there’s no 787F version, yet. Rumors abound there may be in the future.
 
In my opinion the 747's wil fly a very long time. Cargolux, which used to be 747 only, has placed an order for 777x's but i am sure there will always be a niche for nose loading freight. So either the 747 will fly for a very long time, or there will be the need for a replacement with the capability for long pieces of freight.
 
3393RP said:
The Concorde flight hardware was a tour de force of TTL. Much of the computing was done with stacked double NAND gate ICs, similar to the configuration of the Apollo guidance computer. Cheap and simple. The economics of flying supersonic is what killed them. One hundred seats stuffed in a small tube turned out to be a dead end.
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My point was there's a myriad of complicated hardware that is not simple to reproduce once you get to that level, not that all such aircraft have all of those things. And once you get to the point of basically any of them, you get outside the realm of what can be reproduced without some kind of significant infrastructure, never mind the knowledge behind making it work right.
 
Ted said:
My point was there's a myriad of complicated hardware that is not simple to reproduce once you get to that level, not that all such aircraft have all of those things. And once you get to the point of basically any of them, you get outside the realm of what can be reproduced without some kind of significant infrastructure, never mind the knowledge behind making it work right.
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I wasn't criticizing your post, just commenting on the elegant simplicity of Concorde's flight controls. Transistor/transistor logic (TTL), the electronic manifestation of Boolean logic, used the invention of the integrated circuit to produce computing devices that literally changed the world.
 
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The 747 will most likely fly longer than most of the planes I have worked on. DHC-2, DHC -3, P-3, A-4, T-2, F-4, C-150,C172, Beech B-19,C-208, C-207, ...... Well maybe not all of them but some of them..:rolleyes:
 
Skip Miller said:
Boeing has freighters based on 737, 767, 777, and 787 platforms.

I love the 747 but the fact is that Boeing alone has a lot of replacements available for a freight company to choose from. All major manufacturers do, too. The revenue from freight business has always been vital to airline businesses, and therefore airplane manufacturers, too.

Fear not! Something will be modified or built from scratch to address the lucrative freight hauling market.

-Skip
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Or, this is made available for commercial business.

c-5-galaxy_001.jpg
 
My guess is that pax 747's will be gone in the next ten years. The 747-8 that got delivered recently will be in service for 50-ish years. There are forthcoming freighter versions of the A350 and 777x. No major orders from any US operators yet, but both FedEx and UPS have older aircraft that will need replacing soon.
 
no one said: until it runs out of airspeed?
 
It's one of my regrets I never flew as a passenger on a 747. I always had intentions of doing so, but the years got away from me.

This documentary is on YouTube, a great story about the birth of the aircraft. It is worth watching, a big reason being that Joe Sutter is featured in it, and he provides insight that no one else involved in the program would know.

 
GaryM said:
You mean until the wing exceeds the critical angle of attack?
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nah... thinking about it being below stall speed at any AOA.

I suppose another answer would be: hits the ground (or water).
 
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