ANA to retire its last two Boeing 747s

All Nippon Airways will retire its last two passenger-carrying Boeing 747s next month, ending an era in which the American-made jumbo jet was a frequent presence in Japanese skies, working both the international and domestic routes of ANA and Japan Airlines.

In the 1970s, ANA and JAL were early purchasers of the revolutionary airplane, and they remained loyal to it and to Boeing, which even produced a special high-density, 560-seat, short-haul version of the 747 just for them.

Changes in technology and in travel behavior and a demand for more flights on smaller planes, however, have caused a global shift. For JAL, that has ended 50 years of loyalty to Boeing products.

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(Source NYTimes)

Update

ANA retired its last passenger 747 on schedule. The final aircraft, JA8961, flew for the last time on 31 March 2014 after 24 years and more than 33,000 flight cycles.

That cycle count is the real story of Japan’s 747s. A long-haul 747 of the same age might have accumulated a few thousand cycles; these aircraft did the work of short-haul jets at 747 scale, which is why Boeing built them a variant of their own.

The “special high-density, short-haul version” referred to above is the 747-400D — a 747 built without winglets, because on a one-hour sector they never repay the weight they add. Nineteen were built. It was the third generation of the idea, after the 747-100SR of 1973 and the 747-300SR.

Japan Airlines had retired its own 747s in 2011. Between them, the two Japanese carriers had operated the most intensively used jumbo jets ever flown.