Long Goodbye
I know we are going to be seeing 'The Queen of the Skies' for many years yet, after all, even the dash four hundreds are only thirty years old! But seeing things like this remind us that this may be the beginning of the end for passenger 747's. I have no doubt that the Freight Dogs - more power to their collective elbows - will be flying her for a long time to come.
Because she will probably 'fade away' like the 707 and the 727, the Comet and Caravelle, there won't be a huge thread like "Concorde Question" in Tech Log. There won't be thousands of devoted followers who rarely even saw her, never mind fly in her, much less actually fly her. Just a gentle acknowledgement of the passing of a remarkable aeroplane and a dwindling number of people who flew in the 747 and actually piloted and maintained the 'Jumbo Jet'.
We will forget the fact that she was for many, many years; the fastest sub-sonic airliner; the largest commercial airliner; the record breaking carrier of people (over a thousand, which might still stand?); and the tireless haulier of the worlds freight. And although beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, the 747, in all its forms, has the same 'function forming beauty' as the Spitfire, Concorde, the E Type Jaguar and the Ferrari 250 GTO. In short, the 747 is beautiful. The A380, in my opinion, is not. It is just big.
Landroger