Landroger writes:
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.
I've had the pleasure of riding a 74 half a dozen times in my life, and will certainly miss the opportunity in the future. A couple flights were on the -200, the rest on the -400. I never got lucky enough to stash my hindquarters on an SP.
Regarding the last two sentences in the quote above, I have to agree that appearance-wise, the A380 isn't as aesthetically "engaging" as the 74, but definitely represents some darn good engineering.
Which is what it is all about -- airframers don't deliberately set out to design a wizzy looking aircraft, they design to meet certain goals, and that sometimes results in something iconic.
Thankfully, there *is* the freight market. This means those of us who are fans will still be seeing the 74 here and there long into the future.
Cheers!