Tag: Flight

• Korean Air is expected to stop flying the longest Boeing 747 passenger flight in March 2025.

• Airlines globally have been phasing out the massive jet in favor of less costly widebodies.

• Only four airlines are scheduled to operate the jumbo in 2025, representing 75% fewer 747 flights than in 2019.

Korean Air is among the last airlines still flying the iconic Boeing 747, but it’s scheduled to pull the jet from a particularly long US route in 2025.

Route scheduling data from the aviation analytics company Cirium shows Korean Air plans to stop flying the 747 on its 7,153-mile route from Seoul to Atlanta — the longest 747 passenger flight by distance — in March. It will replace the 747 with the smaller Boeing 777-300ER, which has fewer seats on board.

Korean’s 777 carries up to 291 passengers, depending on the configuration, compared to the 368 seats on the double-decker 747. Korean did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Korean may sell more upgraded seats on the 777 to make up for fewer total tickets sold per flight. Most of Korean’s scheduled 777 flights to Atlanta are equipped with more high-dollar first and business-class seats than the 747.

The carrier is expected to fly the 747 to New York, Los Angeles, and Singapore next year but plans to retire the fleet fully by 2031. Reuters reported that Korean sold five Boeing 747s in May for $674 million as part of its phase-out plan.

Airlines globally have been phasing out the famous “Queen of the Skies” for years. Boeing ended production of the jet in December 2022 after 54 years and 1,574 units built.

While the 747 was already leaving fleets before 2020 — with no US carrier flying it by the end of 2017 — airlines accelerated retirements when the pandemic uprooted travel.

British Airways, Dutch flag carrier KLM, and Australia’s Qantas all ditched the plane during Covid to help weather losses and better shape their future fleets.

The gas-guzzling four-engine 747 is costly and inefficient compared to newer twin-engine widebodies, like Boeing’s 777 and 787 and Airbus’ A330neo and A350, that airlines now more readily rely on.

The 747 also proved too big for airlines’ needs, especially as point-to-point flying using smaller widebodies became more lucrative than the traditional hub-and-spoke model that warranted greater capacity.

Even narrow-body planes are starting to become more common on long-haul flights.

Airbus’ family of extra-ranged A321neos is particularly revolutionizing this trend because they can target smaller markets with lower demand while still earning profits — and airlines favor that flexibility.

Only 4 airlines will fly the 747 in 2025

Compounding industry changes have dampened the need for jumbo-sized planes like the 747, and only four passenger airlines will still fly it in 2025.

Cirium data through November shows Air China, Korean Air, Lufthansa, and Russian carrier Rossiya Airlines have about 19,0000 collective 747 flights scheduled next year. They’ll cover 35 routes.

That’s a 75% decrease from the nearly 76,000 scheduled 747 flights across 25 global carriers in 2019.

In 2024, about 19,600 of the double-decker flights were scheduled.

South Korea’s Asiana Airlines and Middle Eastern carrier Saudia contributed to this year’s total but ceased 747 passenger flights in March and September, respectively. Asiana Airlines merged with Korean Air in December.

Lufthansa’s more than two dozen 747 jets are expected to cover 21 routes from Frankfurt in 2025, totaling about 12,000 flights, per Cirium. That’s about 63% of next year’s total scheduled 747 flights.

The airline is retrofitting the aircraft with new seats, an investment that signals a future need for the fleet.

By comparison, Air China’s roughly 4,450 scheduled flights would cover four routes from Beijing, Korean’s 1,900 scheduled flights would cover four routes from Seoul, and Rossiya’s about 750 scheduled flights would cover six routes from Moscow.

A dozen 747 routes are scheduled to serve North America in 2025, including New York City, Newark, New Jersey, Boston, Washington, DC, Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago, San Francisco, Houston, Mexico City, and in Canada, Vancouver and Toronto.

The 747s are also expected to touch Brazil, China, Hong Kong, Japan, India, Argentina, Germany, South Korea, South Africa, and Singapore. Rossiya’s 747 operations are expected to be limited to Russia.

The Russian airline is a subsidiary of flag carrier Aeroflot and restarted 747 operations in 2024, likely to take advantage of the 522-seat capacity as Western sanctions limit Russia’s available planes.

Cirium data shows a majority of Rossiya’s 2025 routes are set to fly to the country’s Far East — suggesting the massive 747s are useful not just for tourists but also for cargo needed in the remote Russian region.

A new world’s longest 747 passenger flight

When Korean stops flying its 747 to Atlanta in March, Lufthansa’s 7,133-mile trek between Frankfurt and Buenos Aires would become the new longest passenger 747 flight by distance.

Korean’s 747 flight between Seoul and New York would be the second-longest at 6,906 miles, followed by Air China’s route between Beijing and New York at 6,838 miles.

Although not the longest by distance, Air China’s New York service is the longest passenger 747 trek by flight time at about 17 hours. The longer-ranged Lufthansa and Korean routes reach about 14 hours and 16 hours, respectively.

Air China would run the shortest 747 flight in 2025, flying just two hours across 667 miles between Beijing and Shanghai. According to data from OAG, the route’s nearly 7.8 million available seats ranked it among the world’s top 10 busiest domestic flights in 2024.

The airline’s other intra-China flights to Guangzhou and Shenzhen — and the only other 747 flights it operates besides Shanghai and New York — are about 1,200 miles, or roughly three and a half hours.

Rossiya is scheduled to fly a 747 route under 1,000 miles that hops between Moscow and Sochi, a popular beach town in southwest Russia along the Black Sea.

Read the original article on Business Insider