Free I know you got soul: machines with that certain something by Jeremy Clarkson Page A

error by the Russians. So, of the 1,000 made only fifteen have been lost in genuineaccidents. And most of those were down to human error.
    To get an idea of how tough a Jumbo is, look at that photograph of the decapitated nose cone lying in a field outside Lockerbie. One of the windows is still intact.
    To give you a better idea, let me take you back to the first ever ‘incident’ on a commercial flight. It was 1971, and for all sorts of reasons a 747 was trying to take off with too much weight from a runway at San Francisco that was too short. As it reached 165 knots it ploughed into a timber pier that ran from the end of the runway into the sea.
    The steel gantries ripped through the cabin floor, destroyed the wing flaps, bent the landing gear and shattered the bulkheads. Wooden shards scythed through the tail, and through the cabin too, amputating the legs of one passenger and crushing the arm of another. But somehow the pilot managed to get the plane airborne. And even more somehow he managed to land it again. And not a single person was killed.
    As a piece of design the 747 is astonishing. I mean, when the TWA Jumbo exploded shortly after leaving New York in July 1996 people assumed it must have been hit by a stray missile ora giant meteorite. The notion that a 747 had actually ‘gone wrong’ in some way was just too preposterous.
    Actually, I still think it is preposterous. I mean, when you examine all the evidence it does look like it was blown out of the sky by someone – the US Navy was operating nearby and the Americans, let’s be honest, are no strangers to the concept of friendly fire. Whatever, the US authorities say the central fuel tank exploded and, hey, these guys never lie so there you have it.
    Whatever, safety is not the thing that makes the 747 stand out. The modern jet engine is now so reliable, and the on-board computers so foolproof, that all commercial airliners have a safety record that makes granite look tricky and unstable. The fact is that if you flew on a plane every day, statistically it would be 13,000 years before you hit the ground in a big fireball.
    Nor, actually, am I drawn to the Jumbo because of its speed, though God knows it’s still the jackrabbit of the skies. The newer 777 cruises at 565 mph. The 747 is a full 20 mph faster and, over 11,000 miles, that makes a big difference to your deep-vein thrombosis.
    I’m not even that excited by what the 747 didfor mass transportation. It was born in the days when everyone still believed that flying was for the ‘jet set’ and that supersonic travel was the only way forward. No one had foreseen a time when fat women from the North would be going to Spain for £25.
    No one, that is, except for the boss of Pan Am. Juan Trippe had noted the failure of America’s aeroplane industry to make a supersonic jetliner and pleaded with them to go the other way, to make an enormous plane that would savage the established economies of scale.
    When it finally rolled out of the Seattle factory on 30 September 1968 even the workforce was surprised at its size, and this – this – is the key to my love affair with the Jumbo. The small-boyishness of all its facts and figures. Like, for instance, did you know that on full thrust its engines hurl enough air out of the back to inflate the Goodyear airship in seven seconds?
    Or how about this? It does 2.5 miles to the gallon but because it can carry over 500 people it’s actually more economical, per passenger per mile, than a Ford Fiesta.
    I can be even more anal if you like. It needs 1.5 miles to reach take-off speed and in a 20-yearcareer will cover 1,500 miles going backwards. When it’s being pushed back from various gates, obviously. Not when it’s flying. It can’t do that.
    You may also be interested to know, if you’re a man, that its wingspan is longer than the Wright Brothers’ first flight, and that its tail is taller than a six-storey building. Also, a Jumbo could fly upside down.