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Classic YouTube: Pan American’s First 747 Flight Occurred On This Day In 1970


Classic YouTube: Pan American’s First 747 Flight Occurred On This Day In 1970

It wasn’t the Concorde, but the Boeing 747 might as well have been when it was rolled out of the hangar in Everett, Washington in September 1968. Compared to the Boeing 707s and Douglas DC-8s that were roaming around the skies at the time, the 747 was a flying Titanic…pre-iceberg, anyways. Jet travel was extremely popular and aircraft design was going one of two ways: either “bigger is better” or “make it faster!” Unfortunately, the SST aircraft (Boeing 2707, Concorde and the TU-144) didn’t pan out, but the 747…for many airlines, that was approachable. Who wouldn’t want to be hauling around several hundred paying passengers per flight?

As the launch customer for the 747, Pan American World Airways…er, “Pan Am”…managed to do something no airline had done before or has done since: they influenced a lot of the 747’s design. It probably didn’t hurt that Pan Am had agreed to purchase $525 million worth of aircraft, money that Boeing was burning on the 747’s development. Airlines that would struggle to see any kind of economic return at all from 747 service were buying the jumbo jets, and being first in line put Pan Am ahead of the others simply because they got the four-engined mother first. In fact, Pan Am’s public persona pretty much rode on 747s until the airline spiraled into the dirt in 1991, not helped by seeing pieces of a Pan Am 747 scattered on the Scottish countryside, or by questionable leadership during the late 1970s and 1980s. But for 1969, everything was crystal and roses, and Pan Am was riding the wave of popularity like the professionals that they were. Smiling stewardesses, captains dressed to impress, and big white planes with the blue globe that meant you were traveling on something special…that was how to go heading towards 1970.


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