Today in Aviation: The Mighty Boeing 747 Enters Revenue Service

DALLAS – Today in Aviation, the Boeing 747 ‘Jumbo Jet’ was placed into commercial service with launch customer Pan Am (PA) in 1970.

Flight PA2, operated by ’Clipper Victor’ (N736PA), departed New York (JFK) bound for London Heathrow Airport (LHR). However, the inaugural service had been full of turbulence and wasn’t the launch that PA or Boeing wanted.

‘Clipper Young America’ parked at its gate at JFK waiting to board its passengers. Sadly the airframe would not hold the honor of operating the inaugural service (Photo: Boeing)

Substituted Clipper

Flight PA2 was due to depart on January 21. The 747, ‘Clipper Young America’ (N735PA), had operated the type’s proving flight from JFK to LHR on January 12. Commanded by Captain Weeks, 345 passengers were on board, and the aircraft pushed back at 19:30 EST. However, problems immediately arose with the No. 4 Pratt & Whitney JT9D engine.

The jumbo returned to the gate, and engineers called. But the engine issue, which would plague early Boeing 747s, could not be fixed.

Pan Am needed a substitute airframe and this came in the form of N736PA. Passengers were transferred across to the new jet and finally, at 01:52 EST, the first Jumbo Jet carrying fare-paying passengers took to the skies.

‘Clipper Victor’ would also be involved in the first hijacking of a 747. Flight 299 from New York to San Juan was diverted to Havana with 379 people aboard. (Photo: Rob Russell, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Further Issues

Unfortunately, the return journey wasn’t a smooth ride either, due to further technical difficulties. Thirty-six of the 153 passengers booked on to the flight had to be transferred to other services.

A faulty compressed air bottle used to inflate the emergency escape slides used in an emergency meant that the plane could not carry all of those booked. This meant a further delay of four and a half hours.

Tragically, Clipper Victor would be involved in the world’s worst air disaster on March 27, 1977. The jet collided with a KLM 747 in thick fog at Tenerife (TFN). Five hundred eighty-three lives would be lost that day.

Featured image: ‘Clipper Young America’ would later be renamed ‘Clipper Spark of the Ocean’ following a two-year lease to Eastern Airlines. (Photo: Dean Faulkner, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)