747-100 is on the move

Here I sit at 330A on a Sunday morning getting ready to hop in my car and make the 45 minute drive to my office. Seriously, Sunday morning and it is still dark outside. For someone who is not a morning person, this is quite a feat. So, why so early?

Well the 747-100 aircraft is being moved across Oregon Highway 18 today at 5A. Since starting at the museum several weeks ago, the arrival and move of the 747-100 has been all the rage of conversation. A construction company has been widening the entrance to the museum, large amounts of gravel have been laid to a depth of six feet (I guess the plane is a little heavy), and the permits have been granted to close the highway.

So, still why drive 45 minutes to watch a plane get moved across a highway. A 747-100 is not just any plane. And the plane is older than I am; at 36 this is amazing to me.

The Boeing 747 is a wide body commercial airliner, often referred to by the nickname "Jumbo Jet". It is among the world's most recognizable aircraft, and was the first wide body ever produced. Manufactured by Boeing's Commercial Airplane unit in the US, the original version of the 747 was two and a half times the size of the Boeing 707, one of the common large commercial aircraft of the 1960s. First flown commercially in 1970, the 747 held the passenger capacity record for 37 years. The four-engine 747 uses a double deck configuration for part of its length. It is available in passenger, freighter and other versions. Boeing designed the 747's hump-like upper deck to serve as a first class lounge or (as is the general rule today) extra seating, and to allow the aircraft to be easily converted to a cargo carrier by removing seats and installing a front cargo door. Boeing did so because the company expected supersonic airliners, whose development was announced in the early 1960s, to render the 747 and other subsonic airliners obsolete, but that the demand for subsonic cargo aircraft would be robust into the future.[10] The 747 in particular was expected to become obsolete after 400 were sold, but it exceeded its critics' expectations with production passing the 1,000 mark in 1993. As of June 2009, 1,416 aircraft have been built, with 107 more in various configurations remaining on order.