On the 9th February 1969, the first test flight of the Boeing 747 ‘Jumbo Jet’ took place. The 747 went on to hold the record for the largest passenger capacity for 37 years before being surpassed by the Airbus A380.
The 1960s saw an enormous increase in the use of air transportation. However, existing planes such as the Boeing 707 were relatively small. The first person to approach Boeing with the idea of developing a larger passenger aircraft was Juan Trippe, president of Pan Am, but 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 was still far from complete but, in April, Pan Am committed to buying twenty-five 747s. Boeing agreed to deliver the first one by the end of 1969. However a suitable engine still hadn’t been created, and the company didn’t even 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 the 9th February 1969, piloted by Jack Waddell with co-pilot Brien Wygle and flight engineer Jess Wallick. The plane, named the City of Everett, left the Paine Field near Everett in Washington State – about 30 miles north of Seattle – and performed a number of tests before landing again at 12.50pm. Over 1,000 more test flights were conducted before the plane was certified by the Federal Aviation Authority on the 30th December. The first passenger flight took place on the 22nd January 1970, on Pan Am’s New York to London route.
