KLM final flight B747
 

Today KLM Royal Dutch Airlines operated its final Boeing 747 Jumbo Jet passenger flight KL686 from Mexico City to Amsterdam Schiphol.
PH-BFT City of Tokyo was the last KLM B747-4 on duty
They have been phasing out and retiring their 747s. Another sad news for the real Queen of the Sky.
Give this plane a great tribute
https://www.airliners.net/photo/KLM-...-406/5948203/L

I'll miss them! Several Atlantic crossings a year, upstairs business class was the best way to go!

KLm, Qantas, ??? the old lady of the skies is flying into the sunset. How much longer will KLM keep the freighters flying ?

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Will miss her too. She was a jewel in the Bavarian skies. Weather permitting I saw her frequently, always at the same time,
you could set your watch..

BEA 71

The 747 will live on for many, many years still. In the role she was originally designed for to boot, rather than the degrading existence of shovelling ungrateful punters between continents.

I flew on one (C class) from AMS-ICN last December as much affection as I have the old girl unfortunately no longer fit for purpose, sorry to see them go but preferred the B787 also on C class last year. Similar thoughts about the B744 MIA-LHR also last year.

Seat 1A , on main deck SQ Jumbo ; only way to travel in them days . (also staff travel best ever) . Cabin crew brief ? Your glass shall never be empty .:ok:

And from seat 1A you could see down the runway. However, on SQ I preferred to be further back to see the girls. ;)

Wasn't the first class champagne on SQ either Dom Perignon or Krug?

What makes her "no longer fit for the purpose" from a pax perspective? The 787 is even noisier on the inside, in my impression.

Airbubba
DP as with EK , hic !.

Kind regards
Mr Mac

I made quite a number of C class flights on KLM 747s. The first row window seats (main cabin) were also my favourite seats, but so they were for many other regulars too. So they were not always mine for the taking! The top deck was not for me as the dimensions of the storage bins next to the window seat were too limiting for my needs.

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.

The only reason the flight deck is on the upper deck, is so that it can have a door in the nose for the main deck. I think that is the most significant part of the 747 design.

When I flew the steward remark was - we'll finish the Dom Perignon and then start on the Krug.
Will those days ever return ?

The market has grown. You don’t have 380 PAX going JFK-LHR and then 50 connect to Rome and 80 connect to Paris and 70 go to FRA and 50 to Stockholm and 70 to Madrid. The airlines today (well, last month) can get 270 people who want to go to each of those destinations direct from JFK. Same out of any major hub. Plus the operating cost of 4 engines v. 2.

Not really, Hub and spoke is still alive and kicking, and even more hubs have emerged and are connected.
The truth is that high density seating (3-4-3) now makes airlines able to fit the same amount of passengers and even more cargo into a 777-300, which is much more fuel efficient.

​​​​​​Yes indeed .The good thing about SQ in those days was no restrictions on deadheading crew (i.e off duty ) . You boarded before the pax , generally got F or J if available ( and F/O often upgraded with the Capt ) . Once on board , the first thing you did was change out of uniform and get stuck into the Dom or Krug , as you preferred .

As I fondly recall , the hosty insisted I alone polish off two bottles of DP on a dhd SIN-LHR . Slept well . Happy days on the Jumbo fleet .

Sadly , these protocols were somewhat different on certain ME airlines ; dhd ORD- DOH in Y with only orange juice for sustenance ; not nice....

Singapore Girl, always a " Great way to Fly " . A pity such ads now consigned to the dustbins of history by the PC/ me too - brigade .
( apologies for the thread drift , but it is synonymous with the 747 era . Who remembers the Braniff 747 girls uniform ? See you on Jet Blast !).

Braniff indeed tied the Emilio Pucci uniforms to its 747 service in the ad campaigns.


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Braniff seems to have flown everything including Concorde

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.

I always wanted to know why pilots who have flown the B-747 loved it so much. I've heard from many of them it was their favorite airliner.

It has 4 of everything important (engines, generators, hydraulic systems...), can easily run on any 3 of each, will still work with 2 in a pinch, and can survive long enough to get to an airport on 1...

I don't feel this way about the other Boeing's except the 767 which I haven't actually flown but I can probably fly the 747, with no training on the 747 coming in with 757 knowledge and do pretty well, so I've been told

I think Intruder has it...I have just a few thousand hours on the 747-100/200 and then the 744, in both seats, and sat up top you sort of felt you were master of all you surveyed and certainly on those long flights over hours and hours of icy stuff .(Canada,:}, Siberia) it was nice to know you had lots of backup/redundancy etc.

OTOH I have to be honest though and say my newer current steed (Boeing big twin) has a much better "office"......

and if you must ask...neither are the favourite aircraft I've ever flown... my heart is somewhere else..

yeah I know, ....he's a witch, burn him...:*

True . I always said the T7 was designed to be flown by old men . A real breeze to operate on ULR . Great cockpit , great systems , which is why I wished I could have flown the 74-8 with the same avionics set up . Didn't happen .

However, that aside , the 744 had to be the best . Queen of the Skies indeed . People wax lyrical about the 380 , but in the Jumbo cockpit , you looked down on pretty well everybody (maybe a C5 guy would beg to differ ; don't know what their eye height is ).

(p.s talking about favourite CIVIL aircraft here....)

Out on the Boeing flight line, when the weather was nice they'd frequently have the overhead escape hatch open to provide ventilation to the flight deck (with the sun shinning, it could rapidly get pretty hot and stuffy up there with the packs not running). I'd occasionally get up and stick my head out the hatch and think about what it would be like to have to grab one of the inertial reel handles and jump out of that hatch.
Now, I'm not saying I wouldn't do it in an emergency, however the alternative would have to look pretty grim before I'd try it...:eek:
Anyone know if that hatch and the inertial reels were ever used in a real emergency?

I'm with you on that one. I've been with three airlines that had '74's and had the same thoughts when doing the annual egress training. It reminded me of Jack Benny's classic schtick where the robber pulls a gun and demands 'Your money or your life!' After a long pause Benny says 'I'm thinking, I'm thinking...'

I remember you had to step up on the FE seat on the classics to get up to the hatch.

Here's a KLM training video with some embedded Pan Am and Lufthansa film on operation of the hatch:



They were certainly used in the Pan Am 73 hijacking in KHI in 1986. The FE apparently was first to go out after running down the spiral stairs and seeing the hijackers. There were tales over at the Pan Am Space Academy in MIA that the FE came back up the stairs, yelled 'I quit' and exited the overhead hatch without further adieu. The pilots eventually followed leaving purser Neerja Bhanot in command. By all accounts she saved many lives before she was shot in the head by the 'militants' as CNN called them.

https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....4c39ec3c4c.jpg

Pan Am had a training film about the hijacking a year later. The FE was conspicuously absent in the dramatization as I recall.

Those were the times where they encouraged cooperation with the hijackers from the pilots...for obvious reasons that advice is dead...Now you (if somehow the cockpit is breached) will probably meet Mr crash axe upside your skull.

I found the B787 much quieter also the C cabin has the old layout in that you trip over your fellow pax when trying to get out of the window seat also rather cramped, admittedly it was fairly obvious that KLM were allowing the cabin to be run down. From a PAX view I returned from ICN on QR ICN-DOH-EDI on an A350 strikingly different but it's merely a changing of the times.

The Range,

Not only did the 747 have all the system redundancy that Intruder describes, but it also had astonishingly benign handling qualities at a time when most jet transports had some unpleasant ones such as Mach Tuck at high Mach numbers, Dutch Roll in certain configurations and Deep Stall problems. The 747 had none of these and was a veritable 'gentleman's aerial carriage'.

Despite its size, a lovely aircraft in all respects.

Yet, sadly, the same company only installed 2 of many important sensors and decided to use only one on the 737.

I don't know about any emergency, but there was an occasion about 22 years ago where three crewmembers 'escaped' through this hatch and did a little dance on top of the upper deck fuselage. Photo reached the news outlets. The crewmembers involved had to look for a different employer shortly after.

My first international flight was on a B747 nearly 43 years ago. Since them I have travelled between four continents on B747s with four different airlines, They have always been pleasant flights. (Well... one was 'staff travel' and 11 hours on a cabin crew seat -- but it got me there and was very memorable!) My last was on a KLM B747 15 years ago.

A couple of weeks ago I parked up near a new B747 -- in UPS colours. Good to see them still in production.
Here's a couple of them having a 'laugh' about that:
https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....7941a5c640.jpg

Wrong, the FO, who is in the picture, is now a captain, and the captain, who was on the ramp taking pictures of the whole thing, kept his job too and retired at the usual age. They were lucky that the photo, which appeared on the front page of a national newspaper, was viewed generally positively by the public, portraying KLM as a fun place to work.

https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....96c6073e63.png

And I have used the inertia reels (not in an emergency but only to test) and they gave a very gentle slide down the side. It was really rather comfortable!

SQ still serves Dom and Krug (or Taittinger) in F, so I'm not sure I get your point?

Wow, that was brave! Quite literally, a leap of faith
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Quote:

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Originally Posted by Jhieminga (Post 10734482)

I don't know about any emergency, but there was an occasion about 22 years ago where three crewmembers 'escaped' through this hatch and did a little dance on top of the upper deck fuselage. Photo reached the news outlets. The crewmembers involved had to look for a different employer shortly after.

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Here's a news report on these Darwin Award contenders from the Associated Press.



It was toward the end of the days of crew stunts and pranks and at the rise of political correctness and victim empowerment.

Remember this British Airways incident reported in The Sunday Times?

And it's all fun and games until somebody gets hurt. Or, more likely these days, gets sued.

A couple of 747 jumpseat remembrances.

Years ago I got a jumpseat on a 747 freighter. The newhire flight engineer gave me the required egress briefing. She said that if we need to use the upper deck slide 'Grab ahold of my belt loops and you'll be the second one off the aircraft!'

I jumpseated ORD-NRT on United prior to 9-11. The plane was booked full with standby's listed and there were three FO's on the B-744. It was one of those boom times pre-BK pilot contracts with a little featherbedding. The third FO was added to 'plot' the course on overwater routes. I think a first class seat was used for crew rest in those days, I'm not sure.

The captain warmly welcomed me onboard but the FO in the right seat seemed to vet me rather skeptically. He asked for my ALPA card while flipping though his copy of the Jumpseat Protection List. The captain later took me aside and apologized for this bit of drama from his coworker.

Even though the flight was oversold the purser somehow redid the pax count after the doors closed and she gave me a first class seat for the journey. In those days you could drink alcohol at United as a jumpseat rider as long as you didn't return to the cockpit for eight hours. I was treated like a minor deity and it was great.