747-300

The 747-300 gave the aircraft the shape it kept for the rest of its life. Its stretched upper deck — the SUD — runs 23 ft 4 in further aft than the -200’s, and every 747 built after it, including the 747-8, inherited that profile.

81 were delivered, in passenger, Combi and short-range forms, between 1983 and 1990.

What changed

• Stretched upper deck as standard, with two new emergency exit doors and an optional flight-crew rest area immediately aft of the flight deck.
• A straight staircase to the upper deck, replacing the spiral staircase used on earlier variants. This is not a cosmetic change — the spiral stair ate cabin space above and below, and removing it created room for more seats at both levels.
• Improved engines, cutting fuel burn per passenger by about 25 percent against the earliest 747s. The General Electric CF6-80C2B1 replaced the CF6-50E2; the other two engine options carried over from the -200.
• Minor aerodynamic refinements that raised cruise speed from Mach 0.84 to Mach 0.85.

Takeoff weight was unchanged from the -200. The -300 carried about 10 percent more passengers on the same weights — it was an efficiency variant, not a bigger aeroplane.

The name was used twice

Confusingly, “747-300” had already been proposed for a variant that was never launched — a shortened three-engined aircraft now covered on the 747 trijet page. Boeing revived the designation in 1980 for the stretched-upper-deck aircraft.

Swissair ordered the first on 11 June 1980. It first flew on 5 October 1982, and Swissair took delivery on 23 March 1983.

The versions

Version	Delivered	What it is
747-300	56	The passenger aircraft
747-300M	21	Combi — rear main-deck cargo, more seats than a -200M thanks to the SUD
747-300SR	4	Short-range, high-density, for Japanese domestic routes with 600+ seats

Boeing never built a factory 747-300 freighter, though used passenger -300s were converted to cargo from 2000 onwards.

Why it had such a short run

The -300 was overtaken almost immediately. Boeing launched the 747-400 in 1985 — two years after the -300 entered service — and the -400 was a decisively better aeroplane: winglets, a glass cockpit, and no flight engineer.

That last point mattered most. The -300 was the final three-crew 747. Any airline choosing between them in 1986 was choosing between two aircraft of similar capacity where one needed a third pilot’s seat filled on every sector, for the whole life of the aircraft. The -300 never stood a chance.

The last was delivered to Sabena in September 1990.

The end of service

Qantas flew its last scheduled -300 service on 29 December 2008, Melbourne to Los Angeles via Auckland, and ferried the aircraft to storage in the United States three weeks later. Air France, Japan Airlines and Saudi Arabian Airlines were among the other late operators. A few were converted to freighters; the type is now gone from commercial service.