By Bryan Corliss

Dec. 6, 2022, © Leeham News: The final Boeing 747, line No. 1,574, rolls out of Boeing’s Everett factory tonight. The plane was built for Atlas Air, which is scheduled to take delivery in early 2023 – almost 52 years after the first 747 entered service with Pan Am in January 1970.

“It’s kind of a sad occasion,” said Jon Sutter, the grandson of legendary Boeing aircraft designer Joe Sutter, the father of the 747.

Jon Sutter – who now works at Boeing in the same Boeing Field building where his grandfather designed the Queen of the Skies – hadn’t been born when the first 747 flew. 

And his grandfather, who passed away in 2016, didn’t live to see the end of the program he’s most closely associated with. 

However, even with the end of the 747 program, Joe Sutter’s legacy lives on, his grandson said. 

“His baby, Boeing, is still going,” Jon Sutter said in a recent interview with LNA. “You can see his influence in every other plane out there.” 

SUMMARY:

• First-flight pilots called it a “two-finger” airplane
• 747 was Plan B after SST was canceled
• Last 747s sport special decal honoring Sutter
• 747 survived the Boeing Bust
• 747-8 was final iteration
• ‘Hard to imagine the world without it’

1st flight: Waiting for a break in the clouds

The first 747, dubbed “Spirit of Everett,” takes off from Paine…