RIP, Queen of the Skies

The last Boeing 747 left the Everett, Washington factory yesterday, 2022-12-06. The pioneering and now-venerable design will continue to fly for at least a couple of decades for cargo operators and in government fleets, but as of this writing there are no American passenger aircraft of the type. This makes me a little sad, as the 747 is so impressive and iconic, symbolizing in every image the promise of the jet age. Its most direct replacement, the 777, is incredibly impressive in its own right, but it just isn't as distinctive as the 747. I would have liked for the 747 to be built forever, but commercial quad jets are doomed by the relentless logic of accounting. I hope that Boeing can at some point recover from the disastrous reverse takeover by McDonnell-Douglas so that it can engineer and produce the next great icon of the skies. But until then, blue skies and tailwinds to all the remaining 747s.