'It's a gee whiz feeling' — commemorating the lasting legacy of the Boeing 747

Saying goodbye to an old friend is never easy. In Boeing’s case, the friend is a 147-thousand-pound commercial jet with a 195-foot wingspan that changed the face of air travel forever when it debuted in 1970.

The company last week said farewell to the last 747 jet to roll off its factory floor in Everett and dropped some news about future plane plans.

Northwest News Network regional correspondent Tom Banse was at the sendoff for the 747, and said the company pulled out all the stops to commemorate the plane dubbed "the Queen of the Skies."

"The assembly line was pretty much all cleaned out," said Banse," and it was filled with seats, thousands and thousands of chairs."

In the early days, the upper decks were filled with piano bars and other luxury accommodations. But once those lounges were replaced with the standard row of ten seats, commercial aviation travel became much more available and affordable to the masses.

But part of what made the 747 endure was its versatility as both a cargo craft and passenger plane. The ability for the nose of the plane to open for especially large cargo has made it a standard for freight, and the final plane off the production line went to Atlas Air, a freight cargo company.

RELATED: Before enormous, emotional crowd, Boeing delivers final 747

For those in the industry, everyone has a Boeing 747 story.

"It wasn’t sporty, but it was a real pilot’s airplane," said Chuck Griffey, a former pilot and a current docent at the Museum of Flight in Boeing Field. "No matter how many years you've flown and how much experience you have, the first time you are the pilot of a 747, it's a gee whiz feeling."

That feeling of immensity with control is echoed by fellow docent John Weiss.

"It's a whole lot different from anything I ever flew," Weiss said. "Once you got the sense and got used to what the control forces were, you can make it do anything."

Roger Duncan, a former customer engineer with Boeing, echoed the emotional pull of the semi-retirement.

"It almost made me sad," he said." It's ridiculous to say that about an airplane, but it was so amazing, everything about it."

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