Early Boeing 747 Trivia
My first 747 flight was on a new BOAC aircraft from LHR to Palma and back 2 weeks later in summer 1971 - Horrendous delays both ways!
BEA's owned Enterprise Holidays (plus Flair, Hickie Borman, and Martin Rooks, all BEA owned holiday brands) were splashing the new BOAC 747,
plus the 'latest' BEA Airtours 707's in their summer 1971 brochures for Big Jet holidays to Majorca and other Med destinations.
Monarch had just got their first 720B's and that too was splashed double spread in the Cosmos brochure as ''Look what we've bought for you!''
At Palma we often saw the 2 new Condor 747's on the ramp as well, unofficially named Max & Fritz as they were known.
Palma Ibiza and the Canary Islands saw 747's from many of the other Euro operators on holiday flights, Aer Lingus Sabena SAS/Scanair KLM and Swissair (for Balair)
At Heathrow every morning in the early/mid 1970's and then during the day you would see a line up of 747's of BOAC, Pan Am, Delta, National, TWA, Air Canada, Qantas, JAL, Air India, PIA. Iran Air, El Al, Iraqi, MEA, SQ, and usually two SAA Super B's.
Cargo 747's of Pan Am, Seaboard World, TMA, Flying Tigers, and El Al were always over on the Cargo area.
At busy periods/summer saw European passenger 747 operators dropping into LHR, and you could see Olympic TAP Iberia KLM Air France Alitalia Lufthansa SAS Sabena Swissair and Aer Lingus
747-100 long haul operators into LHR were BOAC Pan Am Delta TWA National JAL and Air Canada.
747-100's of AF IB SN LH and EI were also seen on short flights from Europe.
The first 747 SP's appeared in 1976 at LHR with Pan Am, SAA, Iran Air, and Syrian.
Gatwick arguably saw their first ever regular 747 flights with Wardair and CP Air - although both were Affinity or ABC charters, they were in LGW almost daily each summer from the early 1970's. World Airways 747's came in to LGW then as well.
Wardair Canada's 747-1D1 CF-DJC delivered 4/73 Phil Garrett was to be N602BN for Braniff but was first built 3/71 as N810U for Universal Airlines but ntu.
Boeing code -1D1 was for Universal Airlines.
It would be many more years before UK 747 operators would be seen based at LGW until Virgin in 1984, although British Airtours operated a sole brand new 747-236 also in 1984 on charters.
The first 747 Hull losses were due to Hijacks and then blown up.
PAA Clipper Aurora at CAI and a JAL 747 at BEN, and many more 747's would be hijacked during the 1970's.
The first 747 passenger accident was to D-ABYB Hessen a Boeing 747-130 of Lufthansa,
W/Off 11/74 at NBO operating LH540 FRA-NBO-JNB
The crew did not extend the leading edge flaps for take-off causing the aircraft to barely lift off then to stall and crash land 1km from the end of the runway.
Sadly 59 of 157 aboard died.
The next major occurrences were the losses in 3/77 of KLM 747-206B Rhine and PAA's 747-121 Clipper Victor in the TCI runway collision, followed by the loss in the Arabian Sea of Air India's 747-237B Emperor Ashoka after a night take off at BOM en-route to DXB due to an ADI malfunction.
Notable loss was the shoot down over the Sea of Japan of Korean Air Lines flight KA007, a scheduled passenger flight from New York-JFK to Seoul, with an en route stop at Anchorage. The KAL 747-230B was one of the ex Condor pair. All 269 passengers and crew were lost.
Eastern Airlines were an early Boeing customer for four 747-125, N7401 - 7404Q, but these were NTU and were moved over to TWA as -131's, who took up the four aircraft that were in production, but not complete when Eastern cancelled their 747 order.
The last of those four, N7404Q became N93119 for TWA and was the aircraft operating TWA flight 800 lost in the Atlantic Ocean in 7/96 en-route from JFK-CDG, with the burning wreckage falling into the water about 20 miles south of Mariches Inlet on Long Island, 40 miles east of JFK.
It's first flight was August 18, 1971, and it was delivered to TWA on October 27. Boeing bought it back on December 15, 1975, with
the intention of delivering it to the Imperial Iranian Air Force as their "registration" (it appears to be a military serial number) 5-288 but for some reason the deal was not completed and the next day, TWA bought the plane back from Boeing.
(The other three TWA 747's from the Eastern order did go to Iran earlier in 1975 and apparently are still there)
The accident aircraft was msn 20083, the 153rd 747 built and the newest of all the 747-100's in TWA's fleet in 1996, and were equipped with Pratt and Whitney JT9D-7A engines and had a MTOW of 734,000 lbs -- heavier than the original 747-100 spec but not as high as some, which go up to at least 750,000 lbs.
The last 747-100 was delivered new to Iran Air in 1979 as 747-186B EP-IAM (msn 21759) and remained in service with Iran air until 2014.
But, In 1986, two 747-146B SR SUD models, featuring the stretched upper deck (SUD) of the -300, were produced new for JAL who operated them with 563 seats on domestic routes until their retirement in the third quarter of 2006. Only two 747-100B SR SUDs were produced.
Boeing 747-200B SUD Stretched Upper Deck conversion project.
Only UTA (merged with Air France) and KLM decided to take up this Boeing conversion for their GE CF6 powered 747-200B's (Most conversions were Combi's)
Upper Deck Lounges 747-100 747-200 and 747SP
In the early years of entry into 747 service from 1970 almost all 747 operators used the Upper Deck as a cocktail lounge and/or dining room for it's First Class passengers.
Most were lavishly designed and colourful (this was the 1970's) with lounge and couch seating, dining areas, stand up bars, and many featured artwork of the Nation of the Carrier.
Lounges were named - Qantas Captain Cook, Delta Air Canada and SAA The Penthouse, CP Air had a railway theme, Continental Diamond Head Lounge, JAL Teahouse of the Sky, United Red Carpet room and Captains Cabin, TWA Ambassador, Air India Maharajah Lounge, Pan Am Restaurant in the sky. Sabena Le Salon Club, BOAC Monarch Lounge, Braniff International Room lounge. SAS Viking Lounge.
The only exceptions I can think of are charter airlines Condor and Wardair who both had 16 ''Premium'' type larger economy seats up there.
Seems World Airways did have a lounge bit too up there.
I shall miss the 747 and never had a chance to do one last flight on her, Grrr