The Boeing 747 Is Turning 50. Here’s How the ‘Queen of the Skies’ Came to Reign Over Air Travel
Sep 30, 2018, 10:11 PM
On Sept. 30, 1968, the first Boeing 747 rolled out of its custom-built assembly plant in Everett, Washington. From the beginning, everything about the plane once known as the “queen of the skies” was big.
It was the first wide-body “jumbo jet” ever built, involving about 50,000 construction workers, mechanics, engineers and others who took it from an idea to the air in just 16 months in the late 1960s.