Qantas
Qantas took 57 Boeing 747s, was the only passenger customer for the 747-400ER, and retired the type on 22 July 2020.
Qantas took 57 Boeing 747s, and its 747 history contains more distinctive moments than fleets three times the size.
London to Sydney nonstop
In August 1989 a Qantas 747-400, VH-OJA, flew London to Sydney nonstop — 9,720 nautical miles in 20 hours 9 minutes.
The qualification matters: it was a delivery flight with no passengers or freight, using specially produced high-density fuel. It demonstrated what the airframe could do stripped bare, not what it did in service.
VH-OJA is preserved at the HARS Aviation Museum at Illawarra, and can be visited.
The only 747-400ER customer
Qantas launched the 747-400ER on 28 November 2000 and was the only airline ever to order the passenger version. Six were built.
They existed for two specific routes — Melbourne–Los Angeles and Sydney–San Francisco — that a standard 747-400 could not fly with a commercially useful load. The extra capability came from one or two 3,240 US gallon body tanks in the forward hold.
Nobody else had that problem, which is why nobody else bought one. The freighter version sold 40.
The kangaroo
On 22 July 2020, VH-OEJ left Sydney for Los Angeles as QF7474, and the crew drew a 275 km Qantas kangaroo in the sky off the New South Wales coast.
On the way out it overflew HARS and dipped its wings to VH-OJA — the aircraft that had flown London to Sydney thirty-one years earlier. Takeoff was to I Still Call Australia Home.
It remains the most theatrical retirement any airliner has been given.
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Every major Boeing 747 operator — the launch customer, the biggest fleets ever flown, who still flies the 747 in 2026, and when the rest said goodbye.
Pan American World Airways
The airline that ordered the 747 into existence, flew the first service in 1970, took 65 aircraft, and was gone by 1991.
Japan Airlines
The largest 747 operator in history at 108 aircraft, and the airline Boeing built three special high-density variants for.
British Airways
94 Boeing 747s, the largest 747-400 fleet in the world, and a retirement brought forward four years by COVID-19.
Singapore Airlines
93 Boeing 747s, the Megatop 747-400s, and a retirement in 2012 in favour of the 777 and A380.
Lufthansa
81 Boeing 747s, the launch customer for the 747-8 Intercontinental, and the last major airline still flying the type.