After nearly 50 years as the premier passenger aircraft in the world, the Boeing 747 is being officially retired by all American airlines this December. While there won’t be any more flights from the original ‘jumbo jet,’ Delta is honoring the classic plane’s memory at its museum with ‘The 747 Experience,’ which opened last week.
Georgia Governor Nathan Deal and Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed were both on hand Tuesday at the grand opening of the exhibit, which features a full 747 filled with interactive exhibits, including cutaways showing the innards of the aircraft as well as a viewing platform on one of the plane’s massive wings. The museum plans to rent out the plane, which was the first 747-400 variant built by Boeing in 1988, for private events in the future.
While today airlines are shifting to smaller, more fuel efficient planes and away from the lumbering behemoths that once ruled the sky, the 747 will always be remembered for being the biggest object in the sky for the majority of flight history. Still in use as a cargo plane, the days of passengers filling up its more than 500 passenger capacity are nearly finished, but its legacy will live on at Delta’s popular flight museum just outside Hartsfield-Jackson airport.
You can see Mayor Reed’s comments on the exhibit and on the Delta Flight Museum in the video below.
