If the 747’s place in history is assured, so too, it seems, is its cultural stature. The jet remains a go-to synonym for aerial enormousness, one that a “Game of Thrones” director recently deployed to suggest the dimensions of a dragon. The 747 also endures as a symbol of speed, escape and, frankly, sexiness, one that － along with the pleasingly palindromic rhythm of its number-name － has appealed in particular to singers. A 747 playlist might include Prince （“you are flying abroad the seduction 747”）; Earth, Wind and Fire （“just move yourself and glide like a 747”）; and Joni Mitchell, who gave perhaps my favorite tribute to 747s （...over geometric farms.”）
The jet also seems certain to be remembered as an icon of modern design. “This is one of the great ones,” said Charles Lindbergh of the aircraft that many consider to be uniquely good-looking. I am surely not the first to speculate that the jet’s distinctive hump （fashioned to facilitate cargo-loading in a future that many expected to be dominated by supersonic passenger jets） suggests the graceful head of an avian archetype. Frequently, looking up from my cockpit paperwork, I'll spot several passengers in the terminal photographing the very jet in which I am sitting. I often see even senior 747 pilots disembark the aircraft that they've just spent 11 hours flying to Cape Town or Los Angles, and then pause, turn around and photograph it.
Indeed, the jet may be most esteemed by those who have been lucky enough to fly it. The very first to do so, the test pilot Jack Waddell, described it as “a pilot’s dream” and a “two-finger airplane” － one that can be flown with just the forefinger and thumb on the control wheel; it is hard to imagine higher praise for such an enormous aircraft. Personally, I find the aircraft to be both smooth and maneuverable, a joy to fly and to land.
Like every 747 pilot since, Mr. Waddell also took a keen interest in how the plane looked. Remarkably, he did so even as he was piloting the new jet on that first-ever flight. “What kind of a looking ship is this from out there, Paul?” he said over the radio to Paul Bennett, a pilot in the “chase” aircraft that was following the newborn 747 through the skies of the Pacific Northwest. The reply from Mr. Bennett echoes through aviation history: “It's very good looking, Jack. Fantastic!”
Many 747 pilots feel the same, and are pleased, but not surprised, to hear that the British architect Norman Foster once named the aircraft his favorite building of the 20th century. Now, well into the 21st century, I asked Mr. Foster for an update. The 747 “still moves me now as it did then,” he told me in an email. “Perhaps with the passage of time, and in an age of ‘look-alikes,’ even more so.”
Mr. Foster has plenty of company. At the start of my first book, a sort of love letter to my job as a pilot, I invited readers to send me their favorite window seat photographs. Many also wrote to share their particular passion for 747. One reader detailed his first 747 flight, on Alitalia, bound for Rome in 1971. “I have been hooked ever since,” he said. Another, Andrew Flowers, a 42-year-old South African writer who lives in Helsinki, wrote that the 747s he saw as a child in Cape Town stood for what “I wanted most in the world: a way to Europe, to adventure to freedom.”
When Mr. Foster emailed me, he also attached a transcript of remarks he made about the 747 in a 1991 BBC documentary. “I suppose it's the grandeur, the scale; it's heroic, it's also pure sculpture,” he said then of the jet. “It does not really need to fly, it could sit on the ground, it could be in a museum.”
Today the first 747 is indeed in a museum － the Museum of flight in Seattle. When I last visited, I couldn't stay long. （Inevitably, I had a flight to catch.） But if you see me there another time － perhaps in a few decades when I myself am retired, with more time, I hope, to sit on benches and listen to Joni Mitchell － come say hello. I'll tell you how much I loved this plane, and how sorry I was that my parents did not live to join me on one of my flights. Perhaps you'll tell me about the first time you ever saw a 747, or flew on one, and together we'll marvel at how it towers above us even at its lowest altitude, even as it rests on the world.
Many 747 pilots feel the same, and are pleased, but not surprised, to hear that the British architect Norman Foster once named the aircraft his favorite building of the 20th century. Now, well into the 21st century, I asked Mr. Foster for an update. The 747 “still moves me now as it did then,” he told me in an email. “Perhaps with the passage of time, and in an age of ‘look-alikes,’ even more so.”
Mr. Foster has plenty of company. At the start of my first book, a sort of love letter to my job as a pilot, I invited readers to send me their favorite window seat photographs. Many also wrote to share their particular passion for 747. One reader detailed his first 747 flight, on Alitalia, bound for Rome in 1971. “I have been hooked ever since,” he said. Another, Andrew Flowers, a 42-year-old South African writer who lives in Helsinki, wrote that the 747s he saw as a child in Cape Town stood for what “I wanted most in the world: a way to Europe, to adventure to freedom.”
When Mr. Foster emailed me, he also attached a transcript of remarks he made about the 747 in a 1991 BBC documentary. “I suppose it's the grandeur, the scale; it's heroic, it's also pure sculpture,” he said then of the jet. “It does not really need to fly, it could sit on the ground, it could be in a museum.”
Today the first 747 is indeed in a museum － the Museum of flight in Seattle. When I last visited, I couldn't stay long. （Inevitably, I had a flight to catch.） But if you see me there another time － perhaps in a few decades when I myself am retired, with more time, I hope, to sit on benches and listen to Joni Mitchell － come say hello. I'll tell you how much I loved this plane, and how sorry I was that my parents did not live to join me on one of my flights. Perhaps you'll tell me about the first time you ever saw a 747, or flew on one, and together we'll marvel at how it towers above us even at its lowest altitude, even as it rests on the world.
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