Randy's Journal: Archives

Randy: You tell a couple of personal stories in the book about Juan Trippe, the head of Pan Am at the time, when he wanted a different kind of fuselage, apparently, than what you had in mind in the early design stage of the 747.

Joe: Well, when we went out to talk to the airlines, they wanted a bigger airplane. And we talked to Pan Am, and I think we talked to British Airways, Lufthansa, Japan Airlines, Qantas, a whole bunch of them. We went around the world with a brochure showing a 250, a 300, and a 350-passenger airplane. What size do you want? They all said 350. And that was sort of a shock. How do you build a 350-passenger airplane? My own people, when we went to the drawing board, said, what do we do now? They started drawing double-deckers, you know, one deck over another. The double-aisle concept wasn't invented at that time.

R: So it was a single aisle on each deck.

J: Well, I think the upper was single, and the lower was a double, but it wasn't anywhere near as wide as we conceived later. But I had a pretty good crew of guys, and they looked at all the problems of a double-decker, and there were many. Emergency evacuation, loading and unloading the airplane's galley, fueling, lack of room for freight. We gathered around the drawing board. And somebody drew a circle around two eight-foot wide freight containers. Then we looked at what we could do for the passengers. Nine and 10 abreast and a 20-foot wide airframe - it just fell into place. But when we started the program, it began as a double-decker, and that was fairly well along.

So when we went to the widebody concept we had to explain it to our own management. And they were nervous. We went to Pan Am and presented the concept. Juan Trippe and his people came out to Seattle, and we had built some rough mockups. And as soon as we showed them the mockup, there was no question, they went for the wide, single-deck airplane. Because we were going to have a freighter with a nose loading door we put the cockpit up above the main deck.

And the only interesting thing that happened was, Juan Trippe was walked into this plywood mockup of the cockpit, and he didn't care about that, but he turned around and looked at the space behind the cockpit, and I'll never forget it, because he turned to his chief engineer, John Borger and said, "What is this space going to be used for?" And Borger made a hell of a mistake, he said, "This could be a good crew rest area." And Juan Trippe just said, "This will be reserved for passengers!" And that's what turned the upper deck into a very profitable part of the airplane.

R: Later on in the book you talk about how the customers really responded to the update to the 747 in 1989, with the 747-400. I remember it well, too. As soon as it started flying, that's when all the orders came in. I mean, it was just unbelievable orders in '90 and '91. Do you expect, once we get through a kind of recovery here, that we'll see that with the 747-8?

J: I think the 747-8 will be a program very similar to the 747-400. It will probably last something like 15-20 years. And of course, the very large airplane market is smaller now because of the point to point flying and the very efficient twins. But when you look at the 747, it is the mainline freighter today. It made the freight business. And the 747-8 is going to continue that trend. So the freight business will take care of a great deal of the market for the 747-8. I believe Boeing will build about the same number of 747-8s as -400s. But I do think the mix will be a little more toward freighters than passengers.

R: And the 747 has been essential to the air freight industry.

J: It made the air freight market. I don't think air freight would be the big industry today without the 747. So it's given people the advantage of seeing other parts of the world that they wouldn't have had because of the ticket prices. And also air freight has changed the economics of the world greatly.

R: While we're on the freight subject, I think there's a common misperception that the 747 originally came out of the competition for the C-5 military transport.

J: Of all the commentary thrown at me, that's the one that I dislike the most, because there's no truth to it. The only thing that the 747 got out of the C-5 was the development of the high-bypass ratio engine. And we couldn't even use the engine developed for the C-5, because it's a high-winged, cumbersome, slow airplane. That engine didn't have enough power to fly the .85 Mach number of the 747. It was a different manufacturer's engine that was developed for the 747. So the concept of the high-bypass ratio engine was developed from the C-5, but that's the only thing the C-5 gave to the 747.

R: One other thing I wanted to ask. I noticed you have a story about this in your book, and I found it intriguing because I've had the same feeling. You discuss sitting at Narita Airport, particularly in years past, when you're waiting for a flight and you look outside and it's just a sea of 747s.

J: Well, you know, that was after I retired, and Boeing was still asking me to go over to Asia once in a while. And at that time the best flight home after the week's work was done was to get on a United airplane that left about 6 p.m., just at dusk. And after working hard all week, you get tired of looking at CNN, and your eyes are blurry. And I was just sitting there and I sort of noticed these big things coming in out of the dusk and I began counting them. I was there for about two hours and I think I counted over 50 747s. There were a couple of DC-10s and other small airplanes.

But I reflected, when we designed that thing back in 1968, '69, it must have been a helluva job because I figured in those two hours we brought in roughly about 20,000 people. And I did have the feeling that, the guys that are all gone now that worked with me, I wished they were there to see what they had done, because I think they did a helluva job.

R: It changed the world, hasn't it?

J: It really changed the world, yeah.

R: You say something interesting toward the end of the book that you see even a further derivative after the -8.

J: I think the 747-8 is going to be just as popular as the 747-400. But people ask me, well, what about the future? People still hope for a supersonic transport. I'm very, very negative on the supersonic transport to carry large numbers of people. I think you'll see supersonic executive jets. But people need a fare that's low enough that most of the people can fly. So, there's not going to be any SST.

There are other adventures that people keep looking at. Different configurations. I believe airplanes like the 747-8 and the 787 are going to have careers of 15, 20, 25 years in their present form. But the market always changes. The airlines want more. There are more needed. So I think that in 15 or 20 years you might see an even larger, more capable 747 being built, just as you'll see changes to the 777 and the 787, and the 737. But the impression that the 747-8 is an interim airplane should be really discounted. It's a first-line airplane that's going to last 15-20 years. But there's going to be a future even after that.

R: Finally, Joe, what do you make of the A380?

J: My only comment is that in 2009, the next version of the 747 will be out, and the A380 will be out, and it's going to be an interesting horse race. And that's all I'm going to say!