This series provides the enthusiast with a first-ever look at the structure, design, systems, and operation of these high tech wonders of the air. Contains engineering drawings, tech manual excerpts, exploded views, overhaul handbooks, cockpit photos, pilot manual excerpts, factory assembly photos, and more.

The eleventh in this series of illustrated monographs on the key civil aircraft of today: this volume focuses upon the Boeing 747. It examines the design, production and in-service record of the 747, and details airline customers and aircraft attrition, as well as a full production list.

Never miss an aircraft wherever your travels take you and make sure you always find hotels with a view of the action. If you are frustrated at choosing a hotel that has views of aircraft movements at the airports you're visiting, then this book will open up the perfect reference guide for you. Includes: Worldwide coverage, with hotels in 54 different countries. Over 270 different spotting hotels listed. Discover the pro's and con's of different hotels. Ensure you make the most of your spotting trips by securing a room with a view. Airport Spotting Hotels gives you the upper hand when researching your spotting trips, giving you the reference guide to all of the world's major airports.

A comprehensive history of the aircraft that transformed commercial aviation. Includes photos. A presence in our skies for over half a century, the iconic Boeing 747 has transported hundreds of thousands of passengers across the world. From its introduction with Pan American Airlines in 1970, it has persevered as one of the forerunners of commercial flight. Often labeled the “Queen of the Skies,” this is an aircraft revered by passengers and aircrew alike. The first wide-body airliner ever produced, it has set new standards in air travel and opened up the air routes of the world to vast numbers of people who might otherwise have been unable to afford international air travel. This book focuses not only on the 747, but also its many variants, including the YAL-1A, which Boeing developed for the US Air Force, and the Evergreen 747 Supertanker, a 747-200, modified as an aerial application for fire-fighting. Across its types, the 747 carries around half the world’s air freight. Accordingly, freight variants feature here too, including the 747-8.The sheer size of the workload carried out by this craft is astounding. From the glamorous 1970s, an era of rapid expansion that saw an unprecedented boom in the tourist trade, to the various environmental and economical imperatives that impact upon modern flight, this work shows how the Boeing 747 has been developed in accordance with the changing demands of the ages.

The Boeing 747 has been around for over 30 years but still seems every bit as big as the day it first took to the skies. It represents a quantum jump in the development of civil aircraft, one that revolutionised the way we fly today and the way we accept better prices, service and safety than could have been dreamed of in the early years of jet aircraft.The fact that the Boeing 747 was developed at all is a remarkable testament to the courage and self-belief of a small group of brilliant engineers, all of whom were willing to risk their hard-won reputations by building an aircraft that was so totally different to anything previously offered to the airlines. Its acceptance for production go-ahead was also a notable example of corporate courage -- because many problems lay ahead and there was an enormous amount at stake: had the aircraft not sold in very considerable numbers, the continuation of Boeing itself might have been at risk.Although the theoretical operating profits from a 747-sized airliner were highly seductive, they were only theoretical. Before any profits could be made at all, a huge investment package had to be put together to fund not only the most expensive airframes of all time, but also the wide-ranging changes to basic infrastructure that would be needed make their operations possible. No airline in the world, for example, had passenger steps that were capable of reaching the doors of a 747; or baggage-handling equipment that could operate on such a heroic scale; the maintenance engineers did not have a single hangar bay that could house the aircraft, or the staging needed to reach the outer limits of its structure; the capacity of toilet-servicing units all overthe world would have to be at least doubled. The arrival of the 747 on prestige routes was going to massively increase the scale of everything virtually overnight and global changes of this magnitude do not come cheaply.Most of the major airports of the world would also need a significant amount of investment to accommodate even a small number of 747s. Existing hardstanding areas, terminal buildings and pier layouts were all based on the length, wingspan and turning-circle of the then current generation of jets: in some cases even the pavement weight-bearing strength was already close to its safe limit. The anticipated gradual evolution of aircraft had generally played an important role in the planning of airport facilities, but the impending operational arrival of the 747 suddenly presented a whole new set of problems -- the burden of which would depend largely on the commercial success of the aircraft.As we know today, Boeing handled the problems brilliantly: today we accept flying and commercial aircraft as commonplace, and much of that is down to Boeing and the 747. This book looks carefully at the history of this remarkable sequence of events, the development of the 747 family and the longevity of the Classic -- per-747-400 -- versions.

Airlines of the Jet Age provides the first comprehensive history of the world's airlines from the early 1960s to the present day. It begins with an informative introductory chapter on the infancy of flight and the development of air-transport craft used during the First and Second World Wars, and then wings into the "first" Jet Age--the advent of jet airlines. It continues through the "second" Jet Age of wide-bodied aircraft, such as the Boeing 747 and DC-10, and closes with the introduction of the "third" Jet Age, which begins with the giant double-decked Airbus A380. This reference book is an unparalelled reference for aviation buffs, covering airlines around the globe and throughout the modern eras of human flight. The last book written by renowned airline historian R.E.G. Davies, Airlines of the Jet Age is the ultimate resource for information and insight on modern air transport.

In a highly pictorial look at a decade which saw much change in the world air travel scene, well-traveled aviation photographer Gerry Manning has assembled an exciting collection of images from all over the globe. Over 60 different types are featured, from the propliners still hard at work to newly-introduced Concorde and Tupolev Tu-144 supersonic transports. It was a decade which saw the first Boeing 747 services and introduction of the first Airbus product: the A300. Helicopters ferried between the skyscrapers of Manhattan and from the Scottish mainland to North Sea oilrigs. In a period of transition, early jets like the CV-880 and DC-9 flew alongside turboprops like Viscount and Electra and piston Convairs and DC-6s. Carvairs plied their specialized trade, Martin 4-0-4s were still in use as feederliners and the Warsaw Pact countries provided a captive market for the vast Soviet aviation industry. Detailed captions give the background to the images and the fate of the aircraft and operators depicted. This attractive all-color publication is a valuable reference for enthusiasts, historians, modelers, or anyone in need of an infusion of nostalgia.

A poetic and nuanced exploration of the human experience of flight that reminds us of the full imaginative weight of our most ordinary journeys—and reawakens our capacity to be amazed. The twenty-first century has relegated airplane flight—a once remarkable feat of human ingenuity—to the realm of the mundane. Mark Vanhoenacker, a 747 pilot who left academia and a career in the business world to pursue his childhood dream of flight, asks us to reimagine what we—both as pilots and as passengers—are actually doing when we enter the world between departure and discovery. In a seamless fusion of history, politics, geography, meteorology, ecology, family, and physics, Vanhoenacker vaults across geographical and cultural boundaries; above mountains, oceans, and deserts; through snow, wind, and rain, renewing a simultaneously humbling and almost superhuman activity that affords us unparalleled perspectives on the planet we inhabit and the communities we form.

Boeing’s 747 ‘heavy’ has achieved a fifty-year reign of the airways, but now airlines are retiring their fleets as a different type of long-haul airliner emerges. Yet the ultimate development of the 747, the -800 model, will ply the airways for many years to come. Even as twin-engine airliners increasingly dominate long-haul operations and the story of the four-engine Airbus A380 slows, the world is still a different place thanks to the great gamble that Boeing took with its 747. From early, difficult days designing and proving the world’s biggest-ever airliner, the 747 has grown into a 400-ton leviathan capable of encircling the world. Boeing took a massive billion-dollar gamble and won. Taking its maiden flight in February 1969, designing and building the 747 was a huge challenge and involved new fields of aerospace technology. Multiple fail-safe systems were designed, and problems developing the engines put the whole programme at risk. Yet the issues were solved and the 747 flew like a dream said pilots – belying its size and sheer scale. With its distinctive hump and an extended upper-deck allied to airframe, avionics and engine developments, 747 became both a blue-riband airliner and, a mass-economy class travel device. Fitted with ultra-efficient Rolls-Royce engines, 747s became long-haul champions all over the world, notably on Pacific routes. across the Atlantic in January 1970, 747 became the must-have, four-engine, long haul airframe. Japan Airlines, for example, operated over sixty 747s in the world’s biggest 747 fleet. By the renowned aviation author Lance Cole, this book provides a detailed yet engaging commentary on the design engineering and operating life and times of civil aviation's greatest sub-sonic achievement.