The Boomer Chronicles

My cousin Dan from Minnesota, who retired early from the U.S. Postal Service this year at age 53, has loved planes since he was a kid. He even flew them for a while.

I was driving past the airport today when I noticed a Northwest 747 parked by the maintenance hangar. Instead of the usual silver and red paint scheme, this particular 747 was painted in the much older Northwest scheme of gray and red. Airlines need smaller more fuel-efficient airplanes so I can only assume this plane is here to have its corporate logos removed. Once stripped of its identity, she will be flown to the airliner boneyard in the dry desert heat just north of Tucson, maybe to never fly again.

My first flight on a 747 was in the early 1970s. American Airlines just received its first shipment of 747s but could not fill them up with passengers, so American installed a baby grand piano in the aft cabin. After the fasten seatbelt light was extinguished I could hear piano music playing behind me. You then could get out of your seat and have your favorite beverage served to you at the piano. A piano bar in an airplane — we will never see this again!

On my retirement trip to Thailand this past spring, I was able to fly on a 747 again but this was a much different experience. First of all, I was flying on the upper deck. Even taxiing at the airport is a different experience from three stories above the tarmac. My seat had 16 adjustments and would lie almost flat. Instead of that baby grand piano, I had my own personal entertainment center complete with on-demand movies, multiple music channels, video games and a map that would tell me exactly where in the world we were as well as how fast and how high we were flying. There was an electrical outlet in the seat to plug in alaptop or charge a cell phone.

I once toured the Boeing plant in Everett, Washington. From the gallery of the world’s largest nongovernmental building, you could watch these behemoths being born. At one point in the assembly process the airplane is so heavy that Boeing used air to float the plane through the plant until the wheels were installed.  Before the engines are installed, Boeing hangs large heavy weights on the wings so the plane will not tip up on its tail. The tour was so popular, you had to make a reservation weeks ahead.

It bothers me that with the retirement of graceful giants, the United States where aviation was invented, will no longer produce the world’s largest airliner. Instead, the government-backed European consortium Airbus now claims the world’s largest, with its Airbus A380.

My office window used to face the approach of Runway 30 right. When the wind was out of the north, I could see a lot of planes coming in for a landing but I would stop and watch a 747.  Its wheels down and locked and flaps outstretched, these giant birds seem to float slowly toward the runway. A few times a year you would hear someone on my side of the building shout, “Here it comes,” and we would gather at the windows to watch the 747, better known as Air Force One on approach. We would differ on the politics of the man on board but we would all agree that Air Force One in flight is a beautiful truly American sight.

I can only hope that the Airbus A380 is a huge commercial flop so Boeing will bring the 747 back, maybe with some new more fuel-efficient engines so the United States can reclaim the crown.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 23rd, 2009 at 12:12 pm and is filed under Baby Boomer. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.