The Boeing 747-400

Uv 400:

Powerplants were the important thing to commercial aircraft functionality, measured via payload, variety, and overall performance, and all had been included inside the 747-200B while the sixty three,000 thrust-pound Pratt and Whitney JT9D-7Q became to be had. First ordered via Northwest Orient, but quick observed by means of Braniff, Japan Air Lines, Singapore Airlines, and Avianca, the model, introducing lighter nacelles, offered a - to three-percentage reduction in fuel consumption. Powered with the aid of the similarly-rated General Electric CF6-50E and Rolls Royce RB.211-524D turbofans, the plane changed into able to boast a new maximum takeoff weight of 833,000 kilos.

While an increased capacity variation had been considered at some stage in the 747 program's earliest days, these higher-thrust engines paved the manner for critical reconsideration now without the previous need to sacrifice shipment hundreds or range for it.

Toward that cease, studies completed in 1976 focused on a 23-foot fuselage stretch, attained with the aid of seven-frame ahead and 8-frame aft insertions, in conjunction with a 27-foot top deck boom, for a brand new combined class passenger capacity of 570, instead of the preceding 440. Yet depressed passenger call for at some stage in the past due-Seventies precluded the viability of this admittedly ambitious assignment and airline client consensus pointed to a greater modest stretch.

This took form as the 747SUD, or "stretched upper deck," within the spring of 1980. Lengthened with the aid of some 23 feet, it included 18 extra home windows and sizable, upward-opening doors with 45-foot-long evacuation slides. Although it carried an eight,000-pound, or two-percent, structural weight increase, the otherwise simplified change increased its six-abreast lodging from 32 to 69, reached through a brand new, instantly, internal staircase that changed the kind's signature spiral one.

Designated 747-three hundred, it turned into supplied as each a new-build version or a conversion of existing 747-200Bs, both of which factored into launch patron Swissair's June 1980 order for 4 of the former and one of the latter. Powered by means of four 64,750 thrust-pound JT9D-7R4G2 engines, it first flew two years later, on October five, and became kind certified a 12 months after that on March 4 at an 833,000-pound gross weight.

While the minimum trade version offered a modest potential growth, it introduced neither extended range nor any form of design enhancement.

747-400 Design and Development:

Several elements brought about critical reconsideration of a extra formidable derivative of the 747 inside the mid-Nineteen Eighties.