Flight 2

Like a Flying Penthouse in the Skies

I was one of the lucky passengers who soared in a state-of-the-art winged duplex.

In the 1960s, the price of airline tickets started to fall, which caused tremendous growth in airplane travel. As a result, the Boeing 707 and its competitor, the McDonnell Douglas DC-8, became victims of their success. Passengers were looking to fly to more destinations with longer ranges, and the airlines were looking to seat more passengers on each aircraft to reduce their cost structure. As demand for seating exploded during this decade, airline manufacturers started to focus on building larger planes. Simply extending the fuselage was not an option because of the limited ground clearance of an aircraft at takeoff.  And so, the logical alternative was to go wider: enter the iconic Boeing 747.

My first long-haul flight on a Boeing 747, my favorite all-time aircraft, was in 1984 when I flew into Hong Kong on a Pan Am 747-SP. The 747 became the iconic plane of international travel because it was the first wide-body jet airliner—and it had an upper deck! It was a second floor, if you can imagine it, and the press quickly dubbed it the Jumbo Jet. It was the plane one saw in movies and advertisements. The "hump" on the forward part of the fuselage was a differentiator, which, together with its size, made it instantly identifiable.

There is a picture on the Boeing website of a Pan Am 707 stationed beside a Pan Am 747. The difference in size is really remarkable. At the time of the 747 rollouts, the 707 was the largest commercial jet airliner in the world. It is visually striking how the 747 is about twice the size of the 707. And even today, when its use has declined with the arrival of other wide-body aircraft, it is still the one airplane that represents the United States to the rest of the world because of Air Force One, a 747 that flies the U.S. president around the globe.

The 747 felt heavy and safe, and because of its size, it seemed to take forever to lift off the ground. But what set it apart was its sense of space, because it was the first aircraft with a two-aisle configuration.  The upper deck is what I loved, because it made the passengers feel special: you boarded the plane, and if you were traveling in business class, you climbed the stairs to a quieter, smaller space, particularly the 747-SP (special performance) version. It felt cozy with only four rows configured 2-2 located behind the flight deck, and it had its own small galley and lavatory. During the flight it was not at all unusual for the pilots to keep the cockpit door open for extended periods, and they would come out to greet the few, lucky passengers who were seated on the upper deck and even take you into the cockpit for a “look-see.”

To show you how geopolitics impacts air travel, the 747-SP was first designed at the request of Pan Am to create an aircraft capable of flying between New York and Tehran—yes, that Tehran, the capital of Iran. At the time this was the longest nonstop commercial flight in the world. It was a “stubby” version of the 747, as we know it today: its considerably shorter fuselage was not complemented by an oversized vertical tail.

It is fascinating to ponder how the pampered and exotic nature of air travel once reigned supreme. It was a golden era of transportation, when boarding a plane was synonymous with sophistication and glamour. Don Draper, the advertising guru of Mad Men, would have had a field day spearheading the campaigns!