747-100F

The 747-100F is the freighter the 747 was always designed to become. The raised flight deck — the reason the aircraft has a hump at all — exists so that the entire nose can hinge upward and let cargo be driven straight into the fuselage on its centreline.

That single design decision, made because Boeing expected supersonic airliners to take passenger traffic away within a couple of decades, gave the 747 a second career that outlasted its first by fifty years.

What it carries

Main deck volume	516 m³
Under-floor volume	149.96 m³
Bulk hold	28.3 m³
Total load volume	694 m³
LD3 containers in the belly	30
Main-deck pallets (2.24 × 3.18 m)	28
Main-deck pallets (2.24 × 2.99 m)	30

Weights and engines

Engines	Four Pratt & Whitney JT9D-7A, 205.3 kN each
Empty weight	173,010 kg
Max zero-fuel weight	238,780 kg
Fuel	183,360 litres
Max payload	65,770 kg
Max takeoff weight	333,300 kg
Max landing weight	255,800 kg

The upper deck on a -100F is not a cabin. It is normally fitted as a three-place crew lounge — space for a relief crew on a long sector, and nothing more.

Why the nose door mattered

Side cargo doors were fitted to later 747 freighters too, and they are cheaper. But only the nose door lets you load something longer than the door itself, because the item goes in along the length of the aeroplane rather than being turned through 90 degrees inside a confined space.

That is why 747 freighters carried loads nothing else could take — engines, machinery, satellite sections, helicopters — and why the type kept selling as a freighter for decades after the passenger versions stopped.

The idea carried through the whole family: see the 747-200F for the classic-generation freighter, the 747-400F for the version that dominated the 1990s and 2000s, and the 747-8F that closed the production line.