Retirement of an icon

Retirement of an icon

By Dave Meggs (retired Captain with BA)

With its instantly recognisable shape, the Boeing 747 is something of an icon in the aviation industry. Recently, however, came the sad news that British Airways is considering retiring the type – so this seems like an appropriate time to look back on both the aircraft itself and some of my personal experiences of flying the ‘Queen of the Skies’.

Dave Meggs

The Boeing 747 has been a part of British Airways for half of its 100-year history, starting way back in 1970 when BOAC (which later merged with BEA to form the airline that we know today) took delivery of its very first Boeing 747- 100. The 747-400 is the British Airways 747 that most people know today. It’s the only type still in service with the airline. As far as my personal experience goes, my career as a pilot began in April 1971, when I started at the College of Air Training in Hamble, which was run by BEA and BOAC. I graduated in March 1973.

I joined BEA in August 1973 and was put on Trident 1s and 2s. We spent three months in the classroom learning about the systems, then had three weeks in the simulator – some 60 hours of training. We were sent to Cyprus to do our base training over Christmas and New Year and started flying on line with passengers under the watchful eyes of a training captain. Over the course of the next decade, until April 1983 when I was ‘laid off’ due to a surplus of flight crew, I flew all three marks of Trident. I became cabin crew on 747s until my return to Tridents in April 1984. In January 1985 I transferred to British Airtours, based at Gatwick, and flew Tristar 1/50/200 and 500 series on a variety of long and short-haul routes.

Next, I moved onto the 747 136/236 as co-pilot in January 1988 – three weeks ground school, four weeks in the simulator and base training at Shannon, including ‘Circuits and Bumps’. (This is a training manoeuvre that involves landing and taking off again without coming to a full stop, circling the airport and repeating the process; it allows pilots to practise many landings in a short space of time.) I was deemed to be acceptable to fly with passengers while undergoing route training on both the 100 and 200 series aircraft.

My training online took me to Toronto, Washington DC, Pittsburgh, Anchorage, Narita (Tokyo), Osaka and Bombay. I was passed to fly with line captains and I spent the next two years flying to Africa, Asia, Australia and both North and South America. In 1989 I transferred to the 747-400 which, with its tail tank for fuel (10,000 kg), had a much increased range and load, helped by its Rolls Royce RB211- 524F engines. In 1996 I left the fleet to get my command on the 100/200 fleet. It was nearly four years before I returned, during which time the 100 series 747s were slowly being retired, having done nearly 30 years service with BA. In the ten years I had on the 400 series, I managed to fly every aircraft in the fleet.

Although many people will have travelled on a 747 as a passenger, I know very few will have been on the flight deck, so I thought it would be interesting to give some details about the flight deck and flying procedures.

Space is quite tight on the flight deck of all the 747s, but particularly on the 400 where you have to be able to reach all of the controls from your seat. The main differences between the different series are that on the 747-136 the controls are all instruments, whereas on the 747-436 most of the controls appear on screens known as a PFD (Primary Flying Display) and ND (Navigation Display). The PFD displays horizon, airspeed, groundspeed, mach, altimeter, turn and slip. The ND shows map, planned route, weather radar, compass heading and wind speed.

All 747s have four seats on the flight deck: captain, first officer, flight engineer (100s and 200s only) and a jump seat. On a route check the checking captain sits on the jump seat on the 100/200 series and on the flight engineer seat on the 400. The benefit of the 400 was that it also had a toilet and bunks on the flight deck.

On longer flights (San Francisco/Los Angeles) on the 100/200 series there were two flight engineers. For flights to Johannesburg, there were two engineers and two first officers and for the longest flights (Hong Kong direct) there were two complete crews. On the 400s there weas only a captain and first officer for flights up to 9 hours 30 minutes flying time. Up to 13 hours flying time they carried an extra first officer and above that two complete crews.

The ruling on rest was that the same crew who did the take-off had to do the landing and the captain who signed the technical log before departure was the commander. On the 100/200, two of the three seats had to be occupied at all times, and on the 400 at least one pilot must be strapped in at all times. The rest periods were decided by the captain and usually were about three hours in length.

After 9/11, visits to the passenger cabin were discouraged so flight crew tended to stay on the flight deck – especially when there were only two crew members.

Flight crew get to the flight deck about 45 minutes before departure. The pilot operating the sector (doing the take-off and landing) does a walk round the aircraft checking everything, then has to put the route into the FMS (Flight Management System), brief the cabin crew manager about any possible weather en route, carry out a safety briefing with the other pilot, speak to the passengers, get route clearance from ATC (Air Traffic Control), then get start-up and pushback clearance.

I learnt to love the 747 for its stability, especially in turbulent air, the ease of keeping its speed within limits and its reliability. It was a real beauty to fly and it always amazed me with its power. The memories associated with flying 747s will stay with me for ever. Some were somewhat traumatic: I was in New York when 9/11 happened and saw the second aircraft fly past on its way to the twin towers. I also saw the first tower collapse and we were stuck in Manhattan for four days before we could fly the second BA flight to leave JFK for London Heathrow. On one occasion on a flight from Sydney to London, I had to make an emergency landing in Uralsk, a remote and small airport in north-eastern Kazakhstan, because a colony of bees being transported to Britain to counter a honey shortage in the UK, escaped and triggered the fire sensors in the forward cargo hold. However, I’ve also been privileged to see things of amazing beauty, particularly the Northern Lights whenever we flew back over northern Canada and Greenland and the clarity of the night sky, especially over Australia. Even after 11 years of retirement myself, I still have fond memories of the 747 and am truly sad to see it too being retired.

Snow covered mountains of Greenland seen from 36,000 feet

Facts & Figures Here are just a few of the mind-blowing statistics about the Boeing 747-400:

• The aircraft is 70.9 metres (almost 233 feet) long – that’s equivalent to about threequarters of the height of Big Ben

• It is 19.4 metres (more than 63 feet) high – that’s almost 4½ double-decker buses stacked on top of each other

• It has a wingspan of 64.4 metres (more than 211 feet), which is roughly two-thirds of the length of a football pitch

• It has a maximum speed of 988 km/h (614 mph, Mach 0.92)

• A 747-400 typically takes off at 290 km/h (180 mph), cruises at 910 km/h (565 mph) and lands at 260 km/h (160 mph). It can hold up to 345 passengers

No wonder they call them ‘jumbo jets’!