This was my winter flying sweat shirt.
Twilight of the Boeing 747?: http://www.cnn.com/2016/02/01/aviation/sun-setting-boeing-747-conversation/index.html
Unmentioned in the story, I think: AF identifies Boeing 747-8 platform for next Air Force One > Air Force > Article Display
Every production run of every product eventually comes to an end. The 747 probably has a decade more to run, but at a very reduced production rate. If we get a sharp economic contraction, it’ll get the axe then.
The two or three the USAF will buy for the President will keep the line open an extra couple of months. Not much impact on a 50-year run.
Anyone else being bombarded by emails from FAASafety.gov? I’ve received about 20 of them so far today.
No FAA emails for me. Then again I haven’t ever subscribed to any of their newsletters so I don’t know that they have my address.
My contribution to the thread …
I recently retired my ancient Apollo-era Plantronics in-ear headset (Plantronics - Wikipedia) for a new David Clark DC PRO-X (DC PRO-X: DC PRO-X | David Clark Company | Worcester, MA).
Wow what a difference. If we’d had these things back in the 727 days I and my coworkers probably would not all be turning deaf in retirement.
In my newly reformed opinion if you’re flying anything without an ANR headset these days you’re a goofball.
It’s funny that the very noisy GA environment went to the earmuff style hearing protection years ago while both passive noise protection and ANR are both just now making slight inroads into the bizjet and airliner market.
I suspect the 747 will end passenger plane production soon and continue with the freighter version.
Call me stubborn, but I still use old-style GA earmuff David Clarks with no nooise cancelling. I’ve seen too many guys run out of battery power at busy moments to trust that stuff. My Clarks are tough and never fail me. You’ll have to pry them from my cold, dead ears.
@Magiver: Tough call. I agree the passenger will get the axe first.
The question IMO is whether there’s enough freighter demand to make keeping the line operating on just freighters economically viable. If not, they either both stay in production or both die together.
There is a tremendous amount of hangar space, tooling, and manpower needed to produce even one freighter a year. Certainly more than that one freighter can pay for.
Although the direct operating costs of a new 747-8F are better than those of a converted passenger 747-400, the rest of freighter economics aren’t all that favorable to new-build equipment.
Boeing isn’t sitting on the “keep it / kill it” fence today, but they’ve sidled right up near it and some gurus at HQ are refining their breakeven estimates every day while eyeing their sales projections and their world economy tea leaves.
I do not know, but it wouldn’t surprise me if Boeing told the USAF in secret, but in no uncertain terms, that USAF has only a short remaining time window to refleet the AF1 mission before 747s go out of production.
I head set is like my log books, I can’t fly anymore solo but I refuse to put that stuff away.
I’m not sure if there is a minimum to keep a production line open. I do know that they sold a bunch of the new 747-800’s. In the freight business there is only 1 mass production nose-loader and that’s the 747. Yes there are a bunch of odd nose loaders built for specific tasks but they’re not in normal freighter fleets. It really is the king of freighters unless you consider the aging fleet of 124’s and the (2)? 225’s. And those things aren’t really set up for regular freight.
I don’t know if there are any 747-100’s left and the 200’s are getting scarce. Quite a few 400’s in service.
About 5 years ago our company started providing Bose A20 ANR headsets in our fleet. They replaced some ageing old Telex things that were supposedly ANR but still horribly noisy. The Bose sets are great and to address the Llama’s post below, nothing bad happens when you run out of battery, you lose the ANR but still have the passive protection until you find a convenient time to change the batteries. There’s a status light that blinks red when the batteries are going so you can change them early if you like, but I find you get at about a duty worth of flying, or 5-7 hours, out of it blinking red before it actually goes flat.
My partner has her own Zulu headset that she prefers over the Bose models. The Zulu’s are a captain’s headset though, ie the cord comes from the left ear and can’t be changed to the right ear so they’re a bit inconvenient for an FO as you have the cord draped across you’re chest. The Bose headsets can have the cord changed over to the opposite ear with a jewellers screw driver.
I looked at the A20. Very nice, but bulky due to the whole *surround & fully enclose the ear *design. If I was in a real noisy airplane I might have opted for it. I’m probably going to be staying on the fairly quiet ones unti I retire.
Ref the snippet above … the David Clarks I got are the same in that regard. In fact that’s a requirement for anything that meets the FAA TSO: it has to work as a passive headset with no manual switching. And at least in US airline ops, using any non-TSO’d headset is verboten.
10+ years ago before aircraft-quality ANR was widespread and semi-affordable I think a lot of pilots bought non-aircraft ANR headsets made for music listening or for sleeping then modified them with aircraft-compatible inputs. Those would indeed shut down completely with no warning when the batteries died, leaving that pilot NORDO until he figured out what had happened.
FWIW the DC’s are ambidextrous. The cord is permanently attached to one ear cup, but the mike boom swivels equally ahead or behind so that corded ear can be your left or your right just by swiveling the mike boom over.
The thing that’s now irritating to me is almost all our aircraft, even the stupidly noisy 737, do not have hot mic provisions. So more and more we’re individually buying the fancy ANR headsets, but unless the other guy is willing to shout you need to leave one ear uncovered to hear him. Part of why I bit the $700 bullet was the increasing number of ANR users I was having to shout at; I figured out if I couldn’t beat 'em I might as well join 'em.
The Bose boom swivels all the way over as well but the ear pieces are set at an angle to the head band so if you swivel the boom over and wear it the “wrong” way the head band kind of sits too far back on your crown and the ear pieces don’t sit on your ears nicely. You have to swap the cord over for it to be comfortable. I think the Zulus swivel all the way as well but have the same issue with the ergonomic design only working one way.
It seems a bit silly not having a hot mic, how do you have effective SOP calls? I guess the Boeings must just be quiet enough for it to work, we wouldn’t hear each other in a 146 though, too noisy, despite its “Whisper Jet” nick name.
“Just quiet (or loud) enough to get used to putting up with” is about the truth. Which is why most folks historically had some kind of earbud or later earbud+boom mic rig that worked OK when you were young, but left you hearing impaired after 30 years.
Unless you’re at high IAS SOP callouts and such work fine as long as you speak up and enunciate. Imagine talking to your wife from across the room while facing the other way. But like a crappy radio connection that technique works great for the expected words at the expected times and falls down a bit if you have something unusual to say.
It really falls apart when you get the guys who talk quietly out their window while doing 330KIAS. Gaah! Pet peeve #47-1/2!
Southwest is all 737s of course, and they have the hot mic feature on their intercom panels. As best I can tell from jumpseating them a few times they also issued their pilots passive cover-the-whole-ear headsets but darn near everybody has bought ANRs & encloses both their ears all the time while talking over hot mic. Seems to work great for them.
Over the last and next 5 years we’re replacing about 3/4ths of our fleet. And not a one with hot mic. Shortsighted morons.
Gotta go fly. Talk to you tomorrow.
I’m missing something here. What do you mean by “hot mike”.
A “hot mike” is always on. With a non-hot mike, you have to push and hold down a button if you want to tell someone something over the system. Somewhere in between is VOX - voice activated, where you turn a mike on by saying “um”, “er” or making some sound before you start with your message.
There’s a scene in Apollo 13 that illustrates this nicely.
Landed in a nice big yard between two houses this morning. Trying to stabilize & cool off when I hear, “Look what Daddy got your for your birthday party!” so I waved them over. Out come two little girls in Uggs, matching nightgowns & plastic, purple “Birthday Girl” tiaras, in other words, way underdressed for 30°. We tethered them & their older brother.
#bestbirthdaygiftever - (even if they’ve only had 5 of them as of today)
And what LSLGuy seems to be saying is that the new additions to their fleet have no intercom at all, unless I’ve misunderstood him.