AIRWAYS INTERVIEW
THE BOEING COMPANY
How long did it take Pan Am to achieve some degree of maturity on its 747s ? In the first years , Pan Am had 33 of the early 747- 100s with Pratt & Whitney JT9D engines . Then , in 1973 , the global oil crisis hit and a recession ensued , almost bringing 747 deliveries to a halt . During that time , Boeing moved on to the 747- 200 and -200B . It had different engines , and that was when the aircraft first achieved maturity .
But , for Pan Am , flying only the early models with the JT9D engines , the reliability didn ’ t really improve for probably seven or eight years because they had a complete change of turbine blades . We changed 97,000 of them . Until that happened , engine reliability stayed very , very poor . It got better , but there is no comparison with today ’ s standards .
Were other changes made to the 747s to improve them ? We ended up doing a lot of work that the carriers with later aircraft didn ’ t have to do . We changed large pieces of fuselage skin and made other improvements , which took a long time . It didn ’ t help performance much , as it increased the aircraft ’ s weight . That was part of these aircraft entering the CRAF ( Civil Aircraft Reserve Fleet ) program of the US Air Force and their structures were substantially upgraded .
NATIONAL ARCHIVES AND RECORDS ADMINISTRATION
Do you see a connection between the quantum leap the 747 represented and the innovations of today ’ s modern wide-bodies ? The 747 was the father of today ’ s giant twinengine wide-body airliners . When they built the first of these twins , the engines were already very reliable . That was because the 747 had made the high-bypass engines reliable . You could never have built a twin that big with brand-new engines because you would never have had the reliability needed .
Everybody calls the 747 the Queen of the Skies , I have always called it the Mother of the Skies , because what it really did was bring reliable widebody engines into being . Without the 747 , it would have taken many more years to achieve that .
Was the 747 the central innovation during your many decades in aviation ? Yes , no question about that .
58 AIRWAYS MAGAZINE AUGUST 2024 www . airwaysmag . com