It caused me to wonder how much the new design has in common with the original 747 from the sixties, other than having 4 engines? Frankly, I find it hard to imagine that it has any parts in common with the original above the nut and bolt level.
Has the 747 reached such an iconic status, that Boeing wants to keep the same designation for marketing purposes or do they really consider it essentially the same airframe?
Interesting, but it doesn’t talk about parts that are common with older 747s. I guess that is only a feature for operators that have older planes in their fleet, since it would effect their maintenance costs for stocking parts and training.
As well as branding, there may be some certification advantage to claiming the later design as a type variant.
Bukhardt Grob certified the following gliders:
Astir
Astir CS
Club Astir
Speed Astir
and possibly one or two others I’m forgetting
under the same type certificate…there are some quite significant differences between the models, and I have no idea how this was possible, but there it is.
Semi-hijack: Why hasn’t Boeing considered extending the upper deck the full length of the fuselage, if it wants to increase the number of seats to better compete with the Airbus A380?
I’ve also seen cites for 70% for the freighter variant. The -400 is from 1988, so not the original -100 from 1970, but I’m sure the -400 had pretty good commonality with the -100 at the time too.
Also interesting:
The 777 has 16% parts commonality with the 757.
The 777 has 34% parts commonality with the 767.
The 777 has 22% parts commonality with the 747-400.
The biggest difference is in the wings and engines. The wings are longer than standard 747 wings and the engine struts are all new for this airplane, they are actually modified 787 struts. The engines are also similar to the 787 engines. Other minor changes are in the fuselage (18 feet long than any other 47) and the landing gear is designed for heavier loads.
For those asking about asking about passenger capacity, the 747-8 is designed to be a cargo plane first. Before this version of the 47, previous freighters were built as empty tubes in Everett then flown to other companies to be retrofitted into cargo planes. During the netcast at work today the president of the 747 program was asked about a passenger version of the plane and he stated that is something that might be looked at in the future. He also reiterated Boeing has no interest in competing with Airbus at the A380 level.
One thing I did notice today while watching the first flight. That is one big ass airplane compared to the 737’s I work on daily.
Thunder doesn’t do anything for the bottom line. Boeing builds planes to make money. It turns out that most jumbo jets are sold for cargo, not passengers. I read that the A380 has a big fat zero in cargo sales because the upper deck isn’t very useful for cargo.
Fedex & UPS both ordered a bunch of A380s. Then cancelled their orders when the delivery delays started multiplying back in 2006-ish. Given the economic changes since then, that turned out to be a good decision for multiple reasons.
Whether they will be back for A380s later is totally an open question today.