At about 19:46 on Sunday 27 September 2026, a Boeing 747-400 crossed the little radar on my desk at 32,000 feet. The label read N451PA, flying as GTI604, and the route line underneath said LUX→HSV: Luxembourg to Huntsville, Alabama. GTI is Atlas Air's callsign. N451PA is a 747-400 freighter that first flew in October 2000, went to Polar Air Cargo that November, and has flown in Atlas Air's own colours since 2021.

It was the third 747 on my screen that day. A Cargolux 747-8, LX-VCD, had gone over at 34,000 feet in the morning as CLX8, and a 747-400 registered G-UNET passed at just under 30,000 feet around lunchtime. Three jumbos in one day, fifty-eight years after the first one was wheeled out.

30 September 1968

The first 747 was N7470, Boeing's line number RA001, serial 20235, and it carried the name City of Everett. It was rolled out on 30 September 1968 at Boeing's new plant beside Paine Field in Everett, Washington, a factory built specifically for the aircraft. HistoryLink records that by then 26 airlines had ordered the 747, and 26 flight attendants, one from each, christened it with champagne.

The numbers were new territory. N7470 is 231 feet 10 inches long with a wingspan of 195 feet 8 inches, and stands 63 feet 5 inches tall at the tail. Four Pratt & Whitney JT9D-7A turbofans gave it 46,150 pounds of thrust each, and it could take off at up to 735,000 pounds. Its cabin was 20 feet wide, the first twin-aisle cabin on an airliner, and it seated between 366 and 452 passengers depending on the layout. It was more than twice the size of the 707 that Boeing had built before it.

N7470 first flew on 9 February 1969. It last flew in 1995 and is now on static display at the Museum of Flight at Boeing Field in Seattle.

New York to Heathrow, 1970

Pan Am was the launch customer, with a 1966 contract for 25 aircraft. The first 747 passenger service was Pan Am's, New York to London Heathrow, on 22 January 1970. It did not go to plan: the aircraft scheduled for the flight had an overheating engine, a substitute was brought in and renamed Clipper Young America for the occasion, and the flight left New York nearly seven hours late. It reached Heathrow 6 hours 14 minutes later with 332 passengers on board.

The last one

Boeing built 1,574 747s over 55 years. The last of them, a 747-8 Freighter registered N863GT, was delivered to Atlas Air on 31 January 2023. That gives Sunday's Luxembourg-to-Huntsville freighter a neat family connection: the airline flying it took the very last 747 off the line.

British Airways no longer flies the type, and passenger 747s are getting rarer over the UK every year. The freighters are where they still turn up, usually high and heading somewhere a long way off. If you have a tracker open, a 747 at cruise is one of the easier things to pick out: four engines, a big number in the type field, and more often than not a cargo airline's callsign.

Did you ever fly on a 747? I'd like to know where to.

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