- Would it be possible to make a Boeing 747 with only two engines or maybe some kind of version of that? Now that the last ever Boeing 747 have left the factory, this is one of the most common questions that I've gotten from you guys. So let's have a look at it, shall we?
(playful chime) The production of the iconic 747 is now sadly ending. Earlier in December 2022, the last ever 747 rolled out of Boeing's assembly line at Everett with thousands of people watching this sad milestone. The operator of this last jumbo, Atlas Air will pick it up in a few weeks to start operating it as a cargo aircraft.
Of course, the mighty queen will continue to reign the skies for many years to come but for many of her fans, me included, this last factory rollout was truly the end of an era. Now in order to answer the question that I put in the beginning of the video, whether or not it will be possible with a two-engine 747, I will first have to give you a little bit of background to set the scene. In the late 1960s and early '70s, when people spoke about the jumbo jet, they could have been referring to any of the first three wide bodies, the McDonnell Douglas DC-10, the Lockheed L-1011 TriStar or, of course, the Boeing 747.
The 747 finally won this early jumbo jet race but not only by being the first to enter service in 1970 but also being the one that, by far, had the longest production run of all of them. In many parts of the world, the term jumbo jet only really means the Boeing 747. There is a lot of history and legacy in the 747, much of which we have already covered here on the channel in this video about freighters, for example but there was also a darker side to the 747, although it really wasn't the aircraft's fault.
You see, when Boeing was working on its jumbo, it was also working on its supersonic 2707 which, by the way, should have been Boeing's next wide body design. The cancellation of the 2707, the loss of some key military contracts plus the very high development cost of the 747 meant that Boeing found itself in some serious financial difficulties back in the early 1970s. And this period became known as the Boeing bust.
Even before Boeing's first 747s began making their way to the customers, the company was forced to start redundancies. They would eventually have to fire around two-thirds of their entire workforce prompting someone to erect an infamous sign reading, "Will the last person leaving Seattle please turn off the lights? " But despite these enormous obstacles and on top of that, the increases in fuel prices later in the 1970s, the 747 became an enormous success.
Compared to smaller narrow bodies used for international travel like this 707 and the DC-8, the 747 lowered per seat cost by up to 30%. This gave 747 operators the ability to reduce ticket prices, bringing down the cost of air travel for everyone. The early days of the commercial jet age in the 1950s and '60s were luxurious but they were beyond the financial means of a lot of people and the 747 and the other wide bodies, they really changed that.
But ironically perhaps, it was actually this focus on efficiency and cost-cutting that would also set the beginning of the end of the 747's reign. In 1974, just four years after the first paying passengers boarded the 747, another wide body entered service, the Airbus A300. This aircraft didn't really have anything like the capacity or the range to compete with the 747 but it was the first wide body that had just two engines.
Now it would take much more time for twin-engine wide bodies to really take hold in the aviation world. Even in the 1990s, it was by no means obvious that the twin engines would displace quad jets completely and that's actually why Airbus developed the twin-engine A330 and the four-engine A340 at the same time. It is also why they went ahead with the launch of the Airbus A380 a full decade later.
Now Airbus did launch the first twin-engine wide body but it was actually Boeing that were the first ones to realize that these jets would become the new norm for long haul. That's why Boeing introduced the 777, giving up on further developments of smaller capacity 747s like the shorter 747SP for example. Boeing did later develop the 747-8 anyway but that was mostly to cover what Airbus was doing with the Airbus A380.
And Boeing also knew that there would still be a market for it as a freighter later on. Because by this point Boeing had already developed the 787 Dramliner to capitalize even more on the concept of very efficient long-haul travel with even smaller passenger capacities. Airbus eventually also realized that twin jets were probably the way to go and developed the Airbus A350.
And that meant that the gigantic Airbus A380, the jet that Airbus aimed to rival and overtake the 747 went out of production over a year before the last 747 delivery, after a much shorter production run. And this is where our story starts to get interesting because even now, some operators continue to run A380s and 747s or even both with passengers. Meanwhile, Boeing is working on the 777X, the biggest twin-engine aircraft ever.
The engine that Boeing has selected for the 777X is the General Electric GE9X which has the largest diameter of any jet engine ever with a fan of 128 inches or 3. 25 meters. The diameter of the cowling of this monster is actually bigger than the fuselage diameter of the Boeing 737s that I fly, just to give you some reference.
But incredibly, someone is actually working on an even bigger engine, big enough to possibly power an aircraft the size of a 747 in a twin-engine configuration. And who is that and who would even want to buy such an aircraft today? Well, I'll tell you all about that after this short message from my sponsor.
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Thank you, Brilliant. Now back to the video. Now everyone agrees that four-engine aircrafts are likely on the way out.
That's not only because twin-engine jets are more efficient but also because they are more versatile and require way less maintenance. For an airline, a smaller efficient jet is, for example, easier to schedule for use on different routes throughout the year. I have previously talked about how the airlines have been moving away from the hub and spoke operating model towards the point-to-point model instead and that's because the point-to-point model makes it possible to link smaller destinations directly to each other which passengers obviously prefer compared to making connections via big super hubs.
The old theory was always that a larger aircraft, carrying more passengers will be more efficient than a smaller one, but these very efficient jets with newer engines and lightweight constructions like the 787 and the Airbus A350 have turned this old theory on its head. Or have they? The thing is that there are still some very large airlines out there who would still use the hub and spoke model and these airlines have no intention on changing to the point-to-point model.
And the reason for that is simply that these Airlines only have one airport that they can realistically use as a hub. So since they're locked to their current operating model, these airlines are restricted by the capacity of their one big airport and that means that they need really big jets. The best example of an airline like that is likely Emirates who have their hub in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
It's no coincidence that Emirates is the biggest operator of the Airbus A380, with 119 of them in its fleet and also 145 Boeing 777s. For its future needs, Emirates has orders of 115 777Xs and 30 787-9s from Boeing plus another 50 Airbus A350s. All of these orders are to replace Emirates' 777s, but not its Airbuses.
Now you might think that they would just need a couple more of these nice, efficient, smaller twin jets to replace the A380s, right? But no, that's not at all how Emirates sees it. What Emirates really wants is for Airbus or Boeing to make a true A380 replacement.
Emirates' President, Sir Tim Clark, has explained that, for example, between Dubai and London Heathrow, the airline flies between four and six A380s per day depending on the time of year and all of these jets are completely full, flying both ways. He also says that Emirates' 787s when they come, will burn a bit more than half of the fuel of an A380. But they will also have about half of the seats.
Now that statement might sound a little bit misleading because the 787 will have a very premium heavy layout with much fewer seats than usual but the point is that despite having four engines, the A380 is profitable and efficient if the airline can keep all of its seats full. And it seems like thanks to the position of their hub, Emirates can actually do that. Tim Clark believes that other airlines haven't really scaled up their Airbus A380 operations to make full use of it the way that Emirates has.
And that's debatable since the circumstances of other carriers are often very different. They might, for example, need to serve multiple hubs or they may have more seasonal operations or even both of that. And that has great effects on whether or not, the A380 is actually profitable.
Now if they actually do replace the Airbus A380s with more Boeing 777Xs, the currently biggest twin-engine jet available, Emirates will need to make more flights in and out of Dubai than they are doing today. Now it might be possible for them to expand their base to make this happen but that likely won't be enough because Emirates would also need more slots in all of the very popular international destinations that they fly to today which will be either very expensive or simply impossible. And that's why Emirates really needs an aircraft the size of an Airbus 380 or a 747 to replace its current double-decker fleet.
The operating model of Emirates absolutely relies on the aircraft size. But the problem is though, like I mentioned before, that not many other airlines work or even can work in the same way. That's unless, of course, someone would introduce a newer aircraft for this role, something that's maybe more efficient, say with maybe two engines?
But that will depend on the availability of some truly enormous engines and that brings us to Rolls-Royce. Now Rolls-Royce make jet engines for a range of different vehicles, a lot of whom doesn't actually have wings, like ships and even tanks. And the company's most current engine development project is called the UltraFan.
Now this engine combines a number of improvements building on Rolls-Royce's experience of making engines for the Airbus A350, the 777 and the 787. It also brings in some features that are new to Rolls-Royce like a geared fan, very similar to the technology that Pratt & Whitney uses on its PW1000G engines. The geared fan allows the UltraFan to have an incredible 15:1 bypass ratio, making it potentially very efficient but it's not that feature that catches the eye when we talk about the UltraFan.
No, that's the sheer size of it. Its fan has a diameter of 140 inches or 3. 56 meters.
That's 12 inches or 30 centimeters more than the General Electric engine for the Boeing 777X. Rolls Royce is actually building the first prototype of this engine right now and in pictures, it looks truly awesome. And do you know what else is awesome?
Clicking like and subscribing to this channel. (clicks tongue) Now, Rolls-Royce have said that they plan to scale down the UltraFan engine to whatever size is necessary for future projects, but why would they be starting with an engine size that won't fit under the engine of the world's biggest twin-engine airliner? Why are they doing this in spite of the fact that it required the building of a new upsized engine testing center in their facilities in Derby in the UK?
Well, we're gonna have to become a little bit speculative here which I, of course, love. But we do know that the UltraFan wasn't always going to be this enormous size. A few years ago, Rolls-Royce was reportedly talking to Boeing about an engine for the next Boeing airplane or the NMA.
This would have been a design to possibly replace the 757 and the 767 which I talked a bout in a recent video I did. Back before the grounding of the 737 Max, Boeing was close to launching the NMA. And at that time, Rolls-Royce was interested in making the engine for it.
But the timing didn't quite work because Boeing was in a real hurry to develop this new jet. They were actually in such a hurry that Rolls-Royce couldn't really develop the UltraFan quickly enough for the NMAs which Boeing then expected to get into service, sometime just after 2025 or so. So Rolls-Royce decided to instead develop the UltraFan more slowly and that seems to be when they decided to bring it up to this enormous new size.
So is there a possibility that Rolls-Royce might actually have a specific aircraft in mind for this engine? Is Airbus or Boeing working on something 747-sized that could be fitted with two of these engines? Well, the honest answer is that we don't know yet.
Officially, at least, Rolls-Royce will complete the prototype UltraFan engine in the next few months and then they will test it. They have said that they have secured enough funds to complete the testing before they will be setting it aside, waiting until a customer needs it. Rolls Royce are also designing other features into the UltraFan to make it adaptable to other programs like hybrid applications, for example.
But again, Rolls-Royce is having to go through some extreme lengths at enormous expense to make and test this engine in a configuration that doesn't fit an aircraft that exists right now, and that's more than a little bit weird, isn't it? There is also another detail worth keeping an eye on here, and that is the geared fan technology of the UltraFan. You see, Pratt & Whitney and its parent, Raytheon, have previously claimed that they own the patent to this technology.
Rolls-Royce might need to deal with this if they put the UltraFan into production. And this is something that could also affect other future engines with geared fan technologies like the CFM RISE, for example. Now going back to the future, possible twin-jet 747 replacement, for Boeing or Airbus to make a twin-engine jet the size of a 747, there would need to be a solid business case for it and that doesn't look that easy today with very few airlines following Emirates' operating model.
Remember that even the comparatively smaller 777X, if you can call such a behemoth small, hasn't yet made any sales in the US, for example. And given what Boeing has on its plate right now with the 777X, the 787 production and the certification of the remaining 737 MAX types, investing on what would be a niche behemoth seems, unfortunately, very unlikely even if Boeing now has a giant empty factory where the 747 production line was. But what about Airbus then?
Well, like Boeing, Airbus has been looking at new production methods using out of autoclave composites that promises to make the new aircraft designs cheaper to produce and quicker to put into service. Lower development and production costs should mean that fewer aircraft orders will be required for a new project to actually become profitable. And an aircraft like the one that we're talking about, would potentially be efficient enough to attract orders from more airlines than just Emirates.
This might sound optimistic which I am by nature but according to some analysts, more and more key airports are becoming slot constrained again which could reignite demand for bigger jets like the 777X or a twin-jet 747. Also for such an aircraft to replace the 747 and the Airbus A380, it would almost certainly need two floors, so this would be an opportunity to also design it with freight in mind. And that's why, in this video, I've been calling this theoretical aircraft a 747 with two engines, not an Airbus A380 with two engines.
As I've explained before, that front cargo door is what allowed the 747 to remain in production for over five decades. Only the 737 has been in production longer than that. So if anyone needs a good business case for a really big airliner, making it also fit the freighter role would likely be a smart thing to do.
In the future, we should see designs, making use of alternative fuels like hydrogen or perhaps some other means of novel propulsion but these technologies are unlikely to be applicable for the biggest jets for decades to come. So the business case for a very efficient, huge long-haul twin-jet used by airlines flying in and out of really crowded airports might not be as outrageous as it first sounds. Now check out this video next which I think you guys are really gonna enjoy or binge on this playlist.
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