Boeing 747 facts
While investigating facts about Boeing 747, I found out little known, but curios details like:
The record for most passengers ever carried by a commercial airliner is 1,088, by an El Al Boeing 747 during Operation Solomon, which involved the evacuation of Ethiopian Jews from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, and started on 24 May 1991. This figure included two babies born on the flight.
The Boeing 747-200 Air Force One costs $206,000 per flight hour to operate (including fuel, flight consumables, and maintenance), while a commercial 747 costs about $20,000 to $25,000 per flight hour.
In my opinion, it is useful to put together a list of the most interesting details from trusted sources that I've come across. Here are 50 of the best facts about Boeing 747 I managed to collect.
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A US cargo plane crashed while moving children from Vietnam. American businessman Robert Macauley heard that it would take over a week to evacuate the survivors, so he chartered a Boeing 747 and arranged for 300 orphaned children to leave the country, paying for the trip by mortgaging his house.
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The record for the most passengers on an airplane was set in 1991 when 1086 Ethiopian jews were evacuated on a Boeing 747 to Jerusalem. The plane landed with 1088 passengers as two babies were born during the flight.
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Spider Silk is so strong it has been theorized by scientists that a single strand the width of a pencil could stop a Boeing 747 in mid flight
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The Boeing 747 prototype had a consistent problem with engines randomly exploding. The test pilot took the president of the engine manufacturer for a ride and blew up engines one by one until he was nervously asked told to stop. The problem was promptly fixed.
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Under full throttle, a top fuel dragster consumes fuel at the same rate as a Boeing 747
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A plane like a Boeing 747 uses approximately 1 gallon of fuel (about 4 liters) every second.
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In 1985, a Boeing 747 tumbled nearly 5.7 miles straight down before the pilots were able to get back control, just seconds before crashing. No one died.
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Typically a Boeing 747 carries 416 passengers, but when a group of Ethiopian refugees were evacuated in 1991 they managed to fit 1,122 people on board. They originally planned to board 760 people, but got to 1,122 because " the passengers were so light".
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Humanity's first flight was shorter than the wing span of a Boeing 747
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It would take 1,084 years flying on a Boeing 747 to circumnavigate the largest known star.
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Because Boeing expected supersonic passenger airliners to render the 747 and other subsonic airliners obsolete, they designed the 747 with a hump to allow the aircraft to be easily converted for cargo by installing a front cargo door below the flight deck.
After Korean Air Lines Flight 007, a Boeing 747 carrying 269 people, was shot down in 1983 after straying into the USSR's prohibited airspace, President Ronald Reagan issued a directive making GPS freely available for civilian use, as a common good. - source
In 1985 JAL flight 123, a Boeing 747 flying from Tokyo to Osaka, lost its tail mid-flight. During the 32 minute descent and then crash into the mountains, many passengers wrote goodbye notes to their loved ones on airplane drink napkins. Of the 520 passengers on board, 4 survived. - source
The first Boeing 747 to fly a commercial route was also the first to be hijacked, 9 months after it flew its maiden commercial flight. 7 years later, it was also one of the planes destroyed in the Tenerife Airport Disaster.
A Boeing 747's wingspan is longer than the Wright brother’s first flight - source
The Apollo 11 mission and the development of the Boeing 747 and Concorde all predate the development of suitcases with wheels.
The iconic hump of the 747 exists because Boeing assumed supersonic planes would make the 747 obsolete for passengers. The raised flight deck allows for a large front cargo door.
A Boeing 747 went out of control over the Pacific and fell 30,000 feet, pulling as much as 5g, before recovering at 9,600 feet and landing safely.
In the 50-year history of the Boeing 747, its fleet has flown more than 500 times the distance of the 150 million kilometres between Earth and the Sun.
In 1975 an American businessman named Robert Macauley chartered a Boeing 747 and arranged for 300 orphaned Vietnamese children to leave the country, paying for the trip by mortgaging his house.
