The passenger jet plane has completely transformed our world. And while the first jet airliner (the De Havilland Comet) wasn’t built in Seattle, the Boeing 707 was, and it was the plane that launched the Jet Age in 1958.
Now, think about this. If you’ve flown a plane to any place in the world, you probably flew on a 7X7 — the hump-topped 747s for intercontinental runs, the 737s for the short-haul flights in the US (and the only plane Southwest flies), the 757s and 767s that fill in various niches with hub-and-spoke flights, or the sleek new 777s that United flies to Europe. These planes turned what was once an expensive, multi-day slog in car, train, bus or boat into just a few hours of plane time (along with the hour security wait and humilating patdown and your bags ending up in Phoenix instead of Portland). Huge new airports like JFK and DeGaulle were built to handle the big new jets. The idea of the “jet set” — wealthy socialites and movie stars flying to San Tropez for the week just because they could afford to — captivated gossip rag readers until the arrival of deregulation in the late 1970s. And did deregulation ever change things. Suddenly, planes were affordable for anyone to fly, and thanks to Southwest and People Express, Grandma was just a $99 round-trip ticket away. The jet is how we get from Point A to Point B in this country. And that jet, unless you’re flying an Airbus with US Airways or JetBlue or an old MD-80 with American, is going to be Boeing.
All of Boeing’s passenger jets are still built in Renton and Everett. And even as Boeing outsources for parts, the 787 will be built right here in the Puget Sound region.
And the 707 and all its descendents built Seattle. Boeing was the financial backbone of Seattle from the 1950s until Microsoft and the medical research industry displaced it in the 1990s. Tens of thousands of Seattle families depended (and still depend) on Boeing paychecks. And when Boeing suffered in the 1970s, Seattle suffered.
So, remember that next time you cram yourself into an all-too-small airline seat — the plane you’re on probably comes from metro Seattle. Our Gift The Fourth is the Boeing 7X7 series planes that carry the people of the world — and all the pandemic viruses that will kill every one of us.
Two useless asides:
1. Two rows in front of me at Safeco Field sit a gaggle of women who have had Mariners season tickets since the Reagan administration. Boeing used to have a deal where they’d deduct the cost of season tickets from your paycheck over the course of a season.
2. In 1955, Tex Johnston rolled a prototype 707 over SeaFair, and it’s now part of the Seattle cultural mythset. Here’s a bit on that.
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See also: Gift the First, Gift the Second, Gift the Third
Read about gifts from around the metroblogging world with this updated guide [la.metblogs] or follow some of these technorati tags being used across the metroblogging network: Metblogs7Gifts, 7Gifts, Metroblogging7Gifts.