Building a Boeing 747-8
A documentary on how the Boeing 747-8 is built.
A full-length documentary following the construction of a Boeing 747-8, from wing assembly through final join and roll-out.
The building it is made in
The Everett factory exists because of this aircraft. When Boeing committed to the 747 in 1966 it had no building large enough to make one, and roughly two years to produce both. Everett is still the largest building in the world by volume.
What makes a 747 wing hard
The wing is the part worth watching. It is not a component bolted onto an aeroplane — on a 747 it is the aeroplane’s primary structure and its fuel tank, and it carries the entire weight of the aircraft in flight through the wing-to-body join.
The 747-8’s wing was designed from scratch rather than carried over from the 747-400: thicker, deeper, with recalculated aerodynamics, raked wingtips instead of winglets, and a different pressure distribution and bending moment.
That is why a new wing costs roughly what a new aircraft costs — and why Boeing could not launch the 747-500X and -600X in 1996 when the new wing alone was estimated at over $5 billion.
The stretch
The 747-8’s extra 18 ft 3 in over the 747-400 comes from two fuselage plugs: 13 ft 4 in ahead of the wing and 5 ft behind it. Watching them go in is the clearest illustration of how a derivative aircraft is actually made — the fuselage is built in barrels, so lengthening it means adding barrels, not redesigning the tube.
Along with the 747SP, which had nearly 48 ft removed, the 747-8 is one of only two 747s whose length was ever changed.
How it ended
155 were built — 107 Freighters and 48 Intercontinentals. The last 747 left this building on 31 January 2023, the 1,574th built, and the line closed after 54 years.
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