The San Diego Air & Space Museum (SDASM) releases some real gems on their Flickr and YouTube pages. Today they posted some of the best footage I have ever seen of Pan Am Flight 845's emergency landing at San Francisco International Airport (SFO/KSFO) on July 30, 1971. If you watched the Smithsonian Channel documentary about the history of the 747 ("747: The Jumbo Revolution" (2014)), it was covered in one of the last segments of the program, but the footage they used for N747PA's landing was not even close to this quality.

For those unaware of the incident, here's a link and brief summary excerpt from WikiPedia:
Wikipedia - Pan Am Flight 845
YouTube: SDASM - "F 3573 July 30 1971 Boeing 747 Emergency Landing at SFO Pan Am Airlines"

Here's a link to a contemporaneous "lessons learned"-film about the flight, which illustrates the degraded quality of the video I had become accustomed to seeing over the past 20+ years about the incident:
YouTube: Viewcroft - "Pan Am B747 San Francisco Accident - 1971"

I kept watching it wondering when they were going to flare...

Tag for later

Is that the one that caused a revamp of the emergency slides because the wind rendered them useless?

Going solely on memory, I believe the slides had to be redesigned to be more rigid. I wouldn't doubt if there were other changes mandated as well.

The last 747 passenger flight was last week I think...

So he managed to fuck up the take-off and the landing. Brilliant.

Hope the FO and FE stole the Capt's credit card for the bar tab that night.

there are virgin 747s currently flying from london-gatwick to cancun and montego bay, klm 747s from amsterdam to mexico city and jfk, a british airways 747s from heathrow to jfk, dulles, and boston.

Maybe......but with as tail low as it was sitting, that might have had something to do with it.

United made its last flight with a 747 last week.

that video would certainly support it!  dang

For United, Delta's will be soon as the airplanes time/cycle out. The "Whale" will be with us for awhile, at least another 20-25 years.

I wouldn't be shocked if Amazon Air doesn't buy 50 more.

It'll be around for a bit.

Navy pilots.

The only 747 wheels and brakes I ever got to play with were Lufthansa, Evergreen, and Tradewinds.

So, did the pilot log that as two landings or one landing and one very quick touch-and-go?

That was a hell of a bounce.   Understandable given the circumstances, but still impressive.

Prime Air (aka Amazon) doesn't have any 747s. Its an all 767 operation.

For what Amazon wants to do the 747 makes little sense. Now that it is getting harder to find used 767s for conversion (and the conversion pipe line is jam packed) i imagine Amazon will either do like FedEx and order new build 767-300Fs (supposedly Boeing is looking at a production rate increase for the 767) or get in line for A330 conversions, but like the 767 the used market for decent planes is fairly dry.
United did.
Plenty of other operators still have them. LH, KE and CA all the the 8i and I imagine they will keep them going for a while.


Not even close. Delta is parking the fleet by the end of the year. Last international flight (ICN-DTW) is next month(17th IIRC), the rest will be charter and some farewell stuff. The last 4 747s delivered DL has won't even be 20 years old.

Delta (and United) would have had to install NGI systems by the end of the year on the aircraft if they want to keep flying them. Both airlines did the math and figured out it was better to go ahead and buy the 777(UA) or A350(DL) than do the mod on the aircraft.

Also DL will be parking a few (2 or 3) 767-300ERs. 777 and 764 cabin mods will be starting soon also.
Going to be yet another crazy summer for utilization on the wide bodies.

As you note, its a feedstock issue. I still wonder how a A330 freighter will do, as I'm less than convinced that structurally and design wise it might face durability issues.

I'd agree that 767s are optimum, but the 747 might be what's available, and Boeing's willingness to deal to keep the line open and viable might buy them time to figure out a 737 replacement.

When the first 747 flew over Dallas it made a "publicity pass" over the Cotton Bowl during a football game. I was a young air mercenary pulling banners in a Stearman over the bowl at the same time.

I'll never forget that sight as he passed along side me. That was only the second time I had been flying in an airplane and could hear another airplane fly by.

I later had to write a letter to the FAA attesting to the fact that it was actually at 1000' AGL. The sight of that biggass bird for the first time terrified a lot of people and many complained to the FAA that it was too low.

Kimball Scribner was the Pan Am pilot on that flight.  I heard him speak of that incident at Embry-Riddle around 1978 where he was a Trustee at the time.  There's a famous picture shot from field level of the pass.  Looks like a scene from "Black Sunday".  Used to have that on a poster in the student bookstore.  Quite the character.