9th February 1969: First test flight of the Boeing 747 ‘Jumbo Jet’

The 1960s saw an enormous increase in the use of air transportation, but existing planes such as the Boeing 707 only had a small passenger capacity. The first person to approach Boeing with the idea of developing a larger passenger aircraft was Juan Trippe, the president of Pan Am, although the company had already produced initial large airframe designs for a failed bid to build a cargo plane for the United States Air Force.
By 1966 the design for the 747 was still far from complete but, in April, Pan Am committed to buying twenty-five aircraft. Boeing agreed to deliver the first one by the end of 1969. This put enormous pressure on the company as a suitable engine still hadn’t been created and the company didn’t own a facility large enough to assemble the completed aircraft.
These issues were eventually overcome to allow the first test flight to take place on 9 February 1969. It was piloted by Jack Waddell who was accompanied a co-pilot and flight engineer. The plane, named the City of Everett, left the Paine Field runway near Everett in Washington State - about 30 miles north of Seattle - and successfully performed a number of tests before landing at 12.50pm.
Over 1,000 more test flights were conducted before the plane was certified by the Federal Aviation Authority on 30 December. The first passenger flight using the 747 took place on 22 January 1970, on Pan Am's New York to London route. The aircraft went on to hold the record for the largest passenger capacity for 37 years before it was surpassed by the Airbus A380 in 2005.

[@rebeltvr6046]

747 Best aircraft of all-time

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RIP Boeing 747 😢

[@minibus9]

awesome video

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My birthday!

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