Originally Posted by
Groundloop
If you mean as a freighter, that is not what it was originally designed for. Juan Trippe of Pan Am wanted a large capacity passenger airliner and Boeing built it for him. True that they used a lot of the work originally put in to Boeing's failed bid for the USAF C5 competition - but the 747 was significantly different from that.
True, but when the 747 was originally developed it was assumed that SST aircraft would soon take over the lions share of long range air travel (the concurrent development of the 747 and the 2707 SST put quite on strain on Boeing resources - both manpower and $$$). So as procede correctly notes, the 747 was designed to be easily turned into a freighter after the SST aircraft became mainline.
Of course, widespread SST use never happened, and the 747 became a backbone of long haul passenger traffic for over 30 years. Oh, and it made a pretty good freighter as well.