THE MAJESTIC 747’S FINAL DESCENT

TRUMP’S BROUHAHA WITH HIS QATAR 747 overflies the reality noted by Ian Bogost in “Queen of the Skies,” The Atlantic, July 2026: “The Boeing 747, the world’s first jumbo jet, has started its final descent.” Here are tidbits gleaned from Bogost’s article, together with my usual Internet soaring. 

Her Place in History. “Combining the immensity of an ocean liner and the elegance of a swan,” Bogost observes, “the 747 is the only commercial jet that deserves to be called beautiful. Over the past two decades, airlines have stopped using it as a passenger plane and replaced it with smaller aircraft that are more efficient, but far less majestic and memorable. The 747 was once a symbol of American might, invention, progress, and populism. Now it embodies the decline of all of those values.”

Bogost recounts, “From 1970, when the first 747 entered service, to 2023, when Boeing stopped building the plane, the company manufactured 1,574 of them, including the two that still serve as Air Force One. Most 747 routes spanned oceans and continents, giving travelers a speedier option than the Queen Mary had across the Atlantic, or the California Zephyr across the West. For generations, these jumbo jets flew to London, to Osaka, to San Francisco. But more recently, 747s have been flying to Pinal [the Arizona aircraft graveyard]—drawn here by their own obsolescence.”

The 747’s Genesis. Bogost describes, “Like most technological innovations of the 20th century, the 747 project was catalyzed by the military. In the early 1960s, Boeing produced designs in response to a government request for a large military transport aircraft. Lockheed won that job and produced the C‑5 Galaxy. Boeing’s loss steeled its resolve and freed up engineers to work on the biggest airplane ever built for commercial service.”

“Had the 747 project faltered,” Bogost notes, “Boeing would likely have gone down with it.” 

Covering Bets. Putting its design in perspective, Bogost describes, “Speed was expected to supplant comfort, eventually. In anticipation of supersonic flight, the 747 was designed to shift into cargo duty sometime by the end of the ’70s; its cygnine hump allowed containers to be loaded through its nose [a feature shared by the C-5 Galaxy], which opens like the mouth of a cartoon shark. But the supersonic passenger jet was a bust, and the 747 persisted. Its accidental longevity defined an era.” 

And Also Defined a Luxurious Upper Deck. Bogost cites British architect Norman Foster calling the 747 ‘his favorite building of the the 20th century.’ Like the ocean liners and railcars it replaced, the 747 is more than a vehicle. It is also a dwelling.” 

“The upper-deck lounge,” Bogost describes, “became the first and most important room in this building—though somewhat incidentally. The charge to make the plane capable of loading cargo through its nose required the flight deck to be situated above the main section. Once the flight deck was placed high, over the cargo slot, the plane needed to sweep back accordingly for aerodynamics, one retired Boeing engineer told me. What to put in that space?” 

Tidbits of Piloting and Exercising. Bogost relates, “On the ground and about three stories up, pilots were aware of all they couldn’t see. Once airborne, though, a sense of infinity dawned out the cockpit windows, and of sheer mass behind the pilots. In the cabin, the heft makes the plane feel almost still, even at 500 miles an hour and 35,000 feet; it is the only plane I have ever flown in whose takeoff and landing were imperceptible to the senses. Paul Gallaher, a longtime 747 captain, told me he couldn’t remember a hard landing. He said that it was the plane every pilot wanted to fly, the top rung of a commercial-aviation career.”

For passengers, Bogost recounts, “A TWA pamphlet about 747 service from the early 1970s encouraged passengers to exercise on their flight: ‘Walk 13 times up and down the cabin and you’ve actually covered one mile.’ ”

Piggybacking the Space Shuttle. And Bogost recalls, “The 747’s fusion of aeronautical ability and symbolic power earned it many roles beyond passenger liner and freighter. By 1977, Thomas Gray, the Boeing engineer, was running test flights for a heavily modified Whale to carry the space shuttle Enterprise atop it. NASA used the plane to shuttle the shuttle from its landing sites back to the Kennedy Space Center, in Florida. One icon of America had settled the global skies, and on its shoulders sat another, set to conquer the cosmos. The sight of the pair mated together suggested that the 20th century’s progress would never end.”

“It did, of course,” Bogost relates. “The shuttle program closed in 2011, as 747s were already disappearing from the skies.”

Presidential Travel. Bogost recounts, “Air Force One has been a 747 for nearly 36 years, since George H. W. Bush first ascended its staircase on September 6, 1990, to fly from Andrews Air Force Base to Topeka, Kansas, for a fundraising luncheon.”

“But,” Bogost continues, “Air Force One has aged. The two 747s that currently share the duty are the same ones that Bush 41 flew on. In 2018, the first Trump administration struck a $3.9 billion deal with Boeing to make two new planes, based on the 747-8, the aircraft’s final variation. The planes were meant to be delivered by 2024, but they have not arrived. The project has been plagued by technical issues, supplier disputes, and alleged tomfoolery—empty mini tequila bottles were reportedly discovered on one of the airplanes under construction.”

What Of Trump’s Fixation?  Bogost observes, “In recent years, the 747 has amounted to an old plane for an old-man president…. A common route for Air Force One these days is from Andrews Air Force Base to Palm Beach International Airport, for Trump’s weekends at Mar-a-Lago.”

By the way, Palm Beach International will no longer be PBI. ds

© Dennis Simanaitis, SimanaitisSays.com, 2026