The Boeing 747 at 50: how first wide-body airliner changed commercial aviation forever
- The first Singaporean to fly on a jumbo jet was such an event it made headlines
- By then Hong Kong had already welcomed its first Boeing 747 flight, a Pan Am service, on April 11, 1970
“S’pore man flies in a jumbo jet”, announced a headline in the April 28, 1970 issue of The Straits Times. This newsworthy (at least in Singapore) event had taken place two days earlier, when Lufthansa made its first Boeing 747 flight, from Frankfurt to New York, and Dr Shing Mao had become “probably the first Singaporean to fly in a jumbo jet”. Hong Kong, on the other hand, had already welcomed its first scheduled Boeing 747 flight, more than two weeks earlier, on April 11, courtesy of Pan Am.
The American airline had carried the first fare-paying 747 passengers, from New York to London, the previous January. Singaporeans would have to wait more than a year to welcome a Boeing 747 to its Paya Lebar airport. Arriving in Singapore from San Francisco, by way of Honolulu, Guam, Manila and Saigon on July 2, 1971, the Pan Am flight carried just 22 passengers and arrived 3½ hours late.
Unperturbed, about 5,000 spectators “at the waving gallery and on the parking apron watched as the jumbo jet touched down on the runway and rolled on to the tarmac on its 18 wheels. Clouds of sand and dust swirled into the air, sending airport workers scurrying away as the plane’s exhausts blew across a worksite”.
It is hard to overstate the impact the Boeing 747 – the first wide-body airliner – had worldwide, when it started carrying paying passengers, 50 years ago last month. If a first-generation Boeing 747-100 landed at Hong Kong International Airport today, with a modern airline livery, few people would even notice. But any 50-year-old passenger plane in 1970 was already a museum piece.
In 1920, airlines were still using repurposed World War I bombers, with open cockpits for the pilots, and sliding windows and wicker chairs for the handful of passengers. In fact, the first daily scheduled international air service – an Aircraft Transport & Travel Airco DH.16 from London to Paris – had taken off only in August 1919. From 1970, it would be almost 38 years before a different aircraft – the Airbus A380 – would carry more passengers than a Boeing 747 on a single flight, and more than 500 of various types are still in operation today. One or two jumbos may still be around in another 50 years.
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