Boeing is reportedly going to stop making 747 Jumbo Jets forever after it completes the last of the 16 aircraft currently in order now. The final 747 is now expected to go out of line in the next two years or so, after which the type will have been in production for more than five decades. The impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the air travel and aviation industries have only further depressed an already declining market for the iconic aircraft, which they fondly nickname the “Queen of Heaven”.
Bloomberg
It was the first to report the impending closure of the 747 production line on July 2, 2020. So far, Boeing has refused to confirm or deny that it has made a final decision on the future of the Jumbo Jet. According to reports, The Chicago-based aircraft maker has not yet informed workers at its Everett, Washington, plant near Seattle, where the latest version of these aircraft, variant 747-8, is assembled about upcoming changes. The Everett facility, which has been tasked with pumping the completed 747s since the late 1960s, remains the world’s largest building by volume.
“At a rate of half a plane construction per month, the 747-8 program has more than two years of production ahead of us to meet our current commitments to customers,” said Boeing. Bloomberg. “We will continue to make the right decisions to keep the production line healthy and meet customer needs.”
As it stands now, Boeing has orders for 16 747-8F freighters, including an order for 12 from global logistics company UPS. The remaining plane had been embroiled in a legal dispute with the Volga-Dnepr Group in Russia.
Melv_L – MACASR via Wikimedia
In January, the Russian company had informed Boeing that it would not be able to pay for four 747-8Fs it had ordered, as well as three 777F freighters, apparently due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In June, a United States court ruled against Volga-Dnepr in its attempt to block the resale of those planes to other customers. UPS has already agreed to buy one of these planes, bringing its total order to 13 planes.
There had already been growing signs that the 747 production line was coming to an end in recent years. Production had been reduced to just one aircraft per month in 2015 and is now advancing to only half that rate.
In November 2019 Bloomberg He also reported that the Triumph Group, Boeing’s largest Jumbo Jet subcontractor, was auctioning manufacturing equipment from a plant in Hawthorne, California, which manufactures 747-8 fuselages, indicating a slowdown in work at that site. This facility has made the fuselage for every 747 since PanAm ordered the first examples in 1966. These initial Jumbo Jets, capable of carrying large numbers of passengers over long distances for the time being, contributed to an already revolutionary moment in air travel. stimulated. by a series of new jet planes.
Unfortunately, demand for 747-8 models, the only version of the Jumbo Jet still in production, has declined in the past 15 years, and airlines around the world have also consistently recalled older 747 models in recent years. Boeing has not sold a 747-8i passenger sub-variant, the first flight of which took place in 2010, as the US Air Force purchased two to make them the new presidential VC-25B Air Force One aircraft in 2017. These aircraft were not newly produced, however, having originally been built for the now defunct Russian airline Transaero.
Matt Hartman / Shorealone Films
One of the two 747-8s is intended for conversion to VC-25B Air Force Ones.
Additional sales prospects appear to be increasingly limited. Beyond potential commercial or even private buyers, the only real potential military order would be for a variant to meet the requirements of the US Air Force, however this would likely be a long shot, and it seems more likely that be a derivative of a smaller aircraft, such as the 767-based KC-46 Pegasus aerial refueling tanker.
In total, Boeing has sold fewer than 50 747-8is to date. If production of the 747-8 ends after the company fulfills its current orders, it will have produced just over 153 examples, in total, including those configured as freighters. Sheila Kahyaoglu, an analyst at the Jeffries Financial Group, said Bloomberg Boeing has lost an estimated $ 40 million for every 747-8 sold since 2016.
Boeing’s experience also reflects an overall market trend. In 2019, the European aviation consortium Airbus announced that it would shut down production of its A380, the only real direct competitor to the 747, in 2021 due to lack of demand. When that production line closes, a total of 251 A380s will have been built, a fraction of the more than 1,550 747s of all the models Boeing has built since the 1960s.
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An Emirates A380, the largest single operator of the type.
The COVID-19 pandemic, which has decimated the air travel industry and caused a widespread global economic downturn, has only further aggravated the situation. The air cargo industry has fared better, but there is still not enough demand to justify maintaining the 747-8F production line.
The commercial side of Boeing has run into a number of other serious problems in the past decade, more or less related to the 747, as well. This includes difficulties in the development, initial production, and early years of service of their 787 Dreamliner aircraft in the late 2000s and early 2010s, and, more recently, the massive scandal surrounding the 737 MAX.
The European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), among others, canceled 737 MAX in 2019 after a series of fatal accidents. The FAA recently completed a series of recertification tests on the 737 MAX in cooperation with Boeing, a major step forward in getting those planes back on the air. However, EASA has already said it will conduct its own tests to determine if the plane is safe to fly again, and Boeing had already lost a lot of the type’s sales in the intervening months before the COVID-19 pandemic occurred.
Closing line 747, which is becoming less and less profitable, would certainly offer a way to try to defray at least some of the company’s other losses. Boeing could use that recently released production space and other associated resources for other purposes.
Of course, 747s of various types, including freighters and future Air Force VC-25Bs, will continue to fly for decades to come after production of new Jumbo Jets ends. At the same time, the instantly recognizable 747 family has entered the twilight of its existence.
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