JUMBO HOTSPOTS

摘要

In 1960, at the dawn of the jet age, a ticket from London to New York cost £250 on a 707, VC10 or Comet 4 - but to put that in perspective, a house in-London cost £800. Air travel was strictly for the super rich, diplomats, heads of industry and film stars. Only a decade later, the Boeing 747 entered service and changed air travel for good. The gigantic leap in capacity, from 189 on a packed 707 to upwards of 400 on a jumbo jet, meant the advent of affordable long-haul trips for the common man for the first time. Production of the 747 - the -100, -200, -SP (ultra long-range 'Special Performance') and -300 (which debuted the stretched upper deck) - thrived through the 1970s and early '80s, reaching a combined total of 647 including 73 pure freighters. These variants would latterly be referred to by Boeing as Classic versions of the 747. By the mid-1980s however, airlines began pushing Boeing to evolve the design, and the result was the 747-400, incorporating the -300's elongated upper deck but adding a bigger and lighter new wing, new engines, new software and a two-person digital flight deck that reduced the number of dials, gauges and knobs from 971 to 365.