747-8i

The 747-8 Intercontinental is the passenger version of the 747-8, and the last passenger 747 ever built. 48 were delivered. It is the longest volume-production fixed-wing commercial aircraft in the world; only the single Antonov An-225, built to carry the Soviet Buran shuttle, was longer.

The numbers

Length	250 ft 2 in (76.25 m)
Wingspan	224 ft 7 in
Tail height	63 ft 6 in
Engines	Four GE GEnx-2B67, 66,500 lb thrust each
Passengers	467 in three classes
Range	8,000 nmi
Cruise speed	Mach 0.86
Built	48

At 18 ft 4 in (5.6 m) longer than any earlier 747, the -8 family got its length from a 13 ft 4 in fuselage plug ahead of the wing and a 5 ft plug aft of it.

Designed to fit existing airports

One of the shrewdest decisions on the programme: the Intercontinental was designed to the same height as the 747-400 and to fit existing 747 gates. No airport needed to reconfigure anything to accept it.

That was a pointed contrast with the A380, which required airports to rebuild stands and jetways for a full double-deck aircraft. Boeing’s argument was that an airline could introduce the 747-8 into its existing network without capital spending anywhere on the ground.

The extra 18.3 ft of length allowed 51 more seats than a 747-400, and the flight crew rest area was moved to the upper deck, freeing main-deck and lower-hold space. The result was 37,000 lb of cargo capacity — 33 percent more than a 747-400, and 8,600 lb more than an A380.

Boeing claimed the Intercontinental was 10 percent lighter per seat than the A380, with trip costs about 20 percent lower and seat-mile costs about 5 percent lower.

The cabin

The staircase. On the 747-300 and -400, the stairway to the upper deck is straight and narrow, running from the galley at door 2 to the back of the upper deck on the left-hand side. The 747-8I replaced it with a curved, sweeping staircase. It was originally to be on the right-hand side and was moved back to the left after Lufthansa’s order. The window line was extended to where the stairway meets the upper deck.

The crown space. Boeing proposed using the “crown” — the area above the passenger cabin normally occupied by air conditioning ducts and wiring — by moving the services to the sides. The recovered space could take galleys and crew rest areas, freeing main-deck floor for seats. It has no windows.

SkyLoft. During marketing, Boeing proposed a revenue-generating SkyLoft in the crown: SkySuites, small individual compartments with sliding doors or curtains containing beds, seating and entertainment or business equipment, plus a common lounge, reached by a separate stairway at the rear. More modest SkyBunks were also proposed. Passengers would have occupied ordinary economy seats for takeoff and landing and moved upstairs in the cruise.

Pricing feasibility studies could not make it work, and Boeing dropped SkyLoft in 2007 in favour of upper-deck galley storage, which is what the airlines actually wanted.

Interior. The main cabin borrowed heavily from the 787: curved overhead bins, with the centre row designed to appear attached to the curved ceiling rather than integrated into it as on the 777. Windows are the size used on the 777 and 767-400ER — 16 percent larger than the 747-400’s. A solid-state LED lighting system could set cabin moods from sunrise to sunset, with lower maintenance cost and longer intervals between unscheduled repairs than fluorescent lighting.

Who bought it

Lufthansa launched the Intercontinental on 6 December 2006 and was for a long time the only airline customer — Boeing publicly reassessed the whole programme in early 2009 for that reason. Arik Air announced an intention to buy at Farnborough in July 2008; that order was never confirmed.

In the end the customer list stayed short. Lufthansa took 19, by far the largest fleet, and Korean Air and Air China took smaller numbers. The remainder went to VIP and head-of-state operators, for whom the aircraft’s size, range and four engines were worth more than seat-mile cost.

That last category produced the final chapter. Two 747-8s are being converted into the VC-25B presidential aircraft, and a Qatari 747-8 was gifted to the United States and brought into service as an interim Air Force One in 2026 — meaning the passenger 747-8 will still be flying heads of state long after the last airline retires one.

Why so few

The Intercontinental arrived at the wrong moment. Airlines were moving decisively to twin-engined aircraft — the 777-300ER and later the 787 and A350 — which flew the same routes with two engines instead of four and did not need to be filled with 400-plus passengers to make money.

The 747-8 Freighter had no such competition and outsold it more than two to one.