Delta Will Stage Last Commercial Flight of Boeing 747

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 12, 5:23AM EST · Published Dec 17, 7:30AM EST

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Delta Will Stage Last Commercial Flight of Boeing 747 — © Courtesy of Boeing Co.

Airlines have been phasing out the use of the Boeing Co. (NYSE: BA) 747, which first took to the skies in 1969. The last U.S. commercial flight will be a Delta Air Lines Inc. (NYSE: DAL) flight from Detroit to Seoul with an arrival in South Korea set for December 20.

The carrier announced:

This weekend Delta will bid a final farewell to one of its most iconic aircraft, Ship 6309, the last Boeing 747-400 to be retired by a U.S. air carrier.

Delta’s history with the Queen of the Skies is unique in that it had acquired and retired its first fleet of 747s by 1977 only to acquire a new fleet of 747s from its merger with Northwest Airlines in 2008.

The timeline below aims to capture the long history of this beloved aircraft in preparation for the airline’s farewell tour for Ship 6309, which will begin on Sunday, Dec. 17, with the last domestic departure from Detroit to Seoul, the last international arrival from Seoul to Detroit, and a series of employee flights to Detroit, Seattle, Atlanta and finally Minneapolis on Dec. 20.

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The current version of the 747, the 747-8, has a list price of $386.8 million. The version most likely to survive, at least for a few years, is the 747-8 Freighter, which is used by shipping companies. The 747 is simply too old and fuel inefficient for airlines to use. It has been replaced by Boeing mostly by the 777, which has only two engines and can travel over 8,500 nautical miles. The relatively new 777-8 has a list price of $379.2 million. Carriers rarely, if ever, pay list price.

Other carriers have staged their last 747 commercial flights recently. United Continental Holdings Inc. (NYSE: UAL) was last month.

Where do these planes go after their commercial use is over? Mostly to be stored in deserts where dry air will do them the least damage. From there, it is anyone’s guess.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.