A jet 2½ times the size of anything flying rolls out of Boeing's new Everett plant
By the mid-1960s, Pan Am wanted a jet big enough to cut seat costs by 30 percent, and Boeing had spent two years building a factory just to make one. On September 30, 1968, the first Boeing 747 rolled out of the new Everett Plant in Washington state, built for Pan Am and shown that day to the public and to representatives of the 26 airlines that had already placed orders. The plane had not yet flown. It had not yet flown a single mile, in a building so large it remains the biggest by volume ever constructed.
Pan Am president Juan Trippe forced the 747 into existence by demanding a plane 2½ times the size of the 707, and Boeing bet the company on building it, spending $1 billion and erecting the world's largest building to do so. The rollout put an American manufacturer at the center of global air travel, a position Boeing held until the last 747 left the line in January 2023.
QHow fast was the 747 designed to fly, and what shape made that possible?
Boeing gave the 747 a wing swept back at 37.5 degrees, a steep angle chosen to let the jumbo cruise at Mach 0.85, nearly the speed of the smaller 707s and DC-8s it was meant to outclass. Combined with advanced high-lift devices on the wings, the design let a plane 2½ times heavier than existing jets still operate out of the same runways and airports built for smaller aircraft. Engineers paired that speed with a partial double-deck fuselage, a shape unheard of in commercial aviation at the time. The result was a jet that could carry far more people without demanding new infrastructure. The 747 could use the same runways as smaller jets despite its size.
QHow many people did a standard 747 actually seat, and how was the cabin divided?
A typical 747 carried 366 passengers arranged across three travel classes, with economy seating set ten seats across in each row. That density was central to the economics Pan Am demanded: cramming more paying seats into a single hull was how the airline expected to cut its per-seat costs by 30 percent. Most jets of the era carried well under half that count. Ten-abreast seating became a standard so enduring that it still shapes wide-body cabin layouts on jets built decades later. A single airframe now carried what once took two or three flights to move.
QWhich two engine makers eventually joined Pratt & Whitney on the 747 program?
Pratt & Whitney's JT9D turbofans powered the first 747s off the Everett line, but Boeing later opened the airframe to competing engines from General Electric and Rolls-Royce. GE supplied its CF6 turbofan and Rolls-Royce its RB211, giving airlines a choice of powerplant rather than locking them into a single supplier. That flexibility helped the 747 stay in production across decades and multiple airline generations, long after its original engines had been superseded. The aircraft's airframe outlasted any one engine family built for it. By the time the last 747 left the line in 2023, the jet had flown behind engines from three different manufacturers: Pratt & Whitney, General Electric, and Rolls-Royce.
