The Boeing 747 revolutionised air travel and tourism, allowing affordable flights for millions of people eager to see the world. But the fuel-guzzling, four-engine plane’s days are numbered. Boeing confirmed this week it will stop production of the jumbo jet in 2022. The 747 simply cannot compete with today’s more efficient, twin-engined planes. First flown commercially in 1969, in the same era as the supersonic Concorde , the 747 was an unprecedented success: a total of 1,571 were ordered and all but 15 have been delivered. More than anything, the plane democratised air travel by letting holidaymakers take cheaper flights, often in chartered 747s fitted with economy class seats – legroom be damned. For 35 years, the 747 ruled the skies – until Boeing’s European rival Airbus came out with the super jumbo A380. The 747 owes its existence to Juan Trippe, the visionary founder of the now defunct Pan American World Airways. As far back as the early 1960s, Trippe was convinced that air travel, in particular transoceanic flight, was due for a huge boom. As the story goes, during a fishing trip in Alaska, Trippe persuaded his friend Bill Allen, who then ran Boeing, to build a plane twice as big as the Boeing 707. Trippe allegedly said that, if Allen had the guts to build such an aircraft, Pan Am would buy it. A few years later, the first 747 took to the skies, with Pan Am as the launch customer. Hong Kong got its first glimpse of the new jumbo on April 11, 1970, when a Pan Am 747 touched down from Tokyo carrying 189 passengers and 25 crew. “Dwarfing other aircraft on the apron, the super-jet, with a 231-foot fuselage and a tail as high as six-storey building, taxied to the [newly built] ‘747 Pier’ where its passengers alighted onto the first air-bridge in Asia,” reported the South China Morning Post , under the headline “The Big Bird Arrives in HK”. Thousands of spectators converged on Kai Tak to witness the arrival and a lion dance and local actresses laden with souvenirs welcomed the passengers. “Pan Am’s guest of honour for this event, 86-year-old ‘Sampan Annie’, presented a Chinese scroll to the skipper of the flight, Captain William Saulsberry,” the SCMP report continued. “Sampan Annie – whose real name is Mrs Wong Luk – was the sampan girl who tied the bowline of the first PAA Clipper flying boat, in Hongkong in 1937.” Cathay Pacific would not buy its own 747s until August 1979. The airline’s 747s would continue ferrying passengers to and from Hong Kong until October 2016. Recognisable for its cockpit hump at the front of the fuselage, some configurations of the 747 could hold up to 600 passengers. It is a double decker – the upstairs being for first-class travellers – and has four engines, a flaw now in terms of fuel cost and the environment. “Given the current market dynamics and outlook, we will stop production of the iconic 747 in 2022 ,” general manager David Calhoun said on Wednesday, in a message to Boeing employees. “Fifty years and eight versions. That is a beautiful record,” says Michel Merluzeau, an aviation expert at Air Insight Research. “But its days were numbered, even before the Covid-19 crisis.” It faced competition from the Airbus A350 and even within Boeing, the 747 had to vie with the longer range 777-300ER and the 777X, both of which were much more fuel efficient than the ageing jumbo. In recent years the 747 became a plane “from another era, with production methods that would not work, looking to the future”, says Merluzeau. Like the A380 – production of which will halt in 2021 – it became a victim of global money woes stemming from the 2008 financial crisis. Airlines started to prefer the Boeing 787 or Airbus A350. These twin-engined planes burn less fuel and can fly further thanks to evolved technology, and require half as much maintenance as a four-engine aircraft. The decline of the 747 deepened with the coronavirus pandemic, which led to a stunning fall in air travel and prompted some airlines to announce they will retire the 747 from their fleets. The final Qantas 747 passenger flight departed from Sydney on July 22, outlining the airline’s iconic kangaroo logo with its flight path before heading one last time for the United States. Boeing will keep building 747s until 2022, but just for cargo and military transport purposes. The 747 can also count on support from the White House and the presidential plane Air Force One . The US government is awaiting delivery of two 747-8s, which are bigger, more modern, faster and less fuel-consuming than the current 747-200s that carry the president and his entourage. Additional reporting by Staff Reporter