In an announcement that comes as no surprise to anyone who’s been following the trend of commercial aviation sales over the past few years, Boeing has announced they are officially ending 747 production in 2022.
https://www.businessinsider.com/boeing-747-end-production-coronavirus-2020-7
While COVID-19 has decimated the commercial aviation industry, the 747 was struggling even before this. They hadn’t sold a passenger version of the plane in several years, and their orders for the cargo variant were dwindling. In fact, the contractor who made major portions of the 747 fuselage, Triumph Group, started auctioning off significant parts of its production line several months ago, including machinery critical to building the plane. This was seen by many as an indicator that the plane was basically done for as restarting the line elsewhere would be costly, and sales prospects low (current production rates are around 0.5 planes per month, basically too low to be profitable even with everything intact).
So we come to the end of an era. Most major passenger carriers had already retired the type anyway, and of the few that hadn’t, most of them basically pulled the plug over the last few months with the pandemic. It’s unknown at this point how many passenger versions will re-enter service, and for how long. That all, of course, depends on the recovery of long-haul international travel, which is truly anyone’s guess at this point. It’s entirely possible that few, if any, will return to carrying passengers as they are large and expensive to operate, and by the time the market does recover, too much time will have passed and much newer, more efficient planes will have piled up waiting for a customer to take delivery.
https://www.businessinsider.com/boeing-747-end-production-coronavirus-2020-7
While COVID-19 has decimated the commercial aviation industry, the 747 was struggling even before this. They hadn’t sold a passenger version of the plane in several years, and their orders for the cargo variant were dwindling. In fact, the contractor who made major portions of the 747 fuselage, Triumph Group, started auctioning off significant parts of its production line several months ago, including machinery critical to building the plane. This was seen by many as an indicator that the plane was basically done for as restarting the line elsewhere would be costly, and sales prospects low (current production rates are around 0.5 planes per month, basically too low to be profitable even with everything intact).
So we come to the end of an era. Most major passenger carriers had already retired the type anyway, and of the few that hadn’t, most of them basically pulled the plug over the last few months with the pandemic. It’s unknown at this point how many passenger versions will re-enter service, and for how long. That all, of course, depends on the recovery of long-haul international travel, which is truly anyone’s guess at this point. It’s entirely possible that few, if any, will return to carrying passengers as they are large and expensive to operate, and by the time the market does recover, too much time will have passed and much newer, more efficient planes will have piled up waiting for a customer to take delivery.