'Godspeed, My Beloved Jumbo': Pilot Bids Farewell To Air India's Boeing 747

Earlier this month, aviation enthusiasts and pilots marked the end of an era after Air India sold the last remaining four Boeing 747-400s aircraft to AerSale, an aftermarket aircraft broker based in the USA. The national flag carrier bought its first Boeing 747 in 1971 and named it Agra. The plane operated till March 2021 and made its last flight from Mumbai on April 22 as it departed for Plainfield in the USA, where it will be dismantled and its parts will be reused and recycled.

Now aviation enthusiasts, pilots and people who recalled flying in Air India’s Boeing 474 fleet are bidding farewell to the gigantic aircraft, nicknamed “Queen of the skies”. On Monday, a pilot took to X and shared a picture of himself taken in the cockpit of Air India’s Boeing 474. He wrote, “The privilege and joy of flying the Queen was unmatched. Hope she continues to soar with her new owners. Godspeed, my beloved Jumbo..” This post got over 20,000 views and hundreds of likes.

In a follow-up post, the pilot wrote, “15 years of pure joy. Observers seat, right seat, left seat! Graceful handling, an absolute beauty to hand fly.”

Commenting on this post, a person recalled, “My first foreign visit to England was on a Boeing Maharaja in 1985, and fully enjoyed to and from from bangalore.”

Another person wrote, “What a boss! To have the bragging rights of having flown the Queen of there Skies is truly unmatched.”

An X user asked the pilot about the “dancing in the sky” manoeuvre that the Boeing 474 pilot performed when the aircraft departed from Mumbai on its last destination. The pilot explained this move as “wing wave” and wrote, “It’s called a wing wave, sort of bye bye. It is done occasionally on farewells and aircraft/pilot retirements though never without planning or with passengers on board.”

The Boeing 747 is a double-decker aircraft with more than 400 seats, which can be demarcated into economy and business class seats depending on the design specifications. Air India decided to sell all of its Boeing 747-400 aircraft as it was now uneconomical to keep them operating. In the last decade, the aviation industry has moved to more fuel-efficient aircraft. Boeing also stopped producing the wide-body 747-700 models last year after its 53-year run.