The original 747 was built in response to the Douglas Corporation's decision to significantly increase the number of passenger seats in the DC-8 during the mid-1960s. As Boeing began to build designs for a bigger jet, oversized military cargo planes were responsible for giving them their ground plan:
Although Boeing was still thinking about stretched versions of the 707 during 1965, the legacy of the military design studies obviously contributed to the rapid progress of the 747 design, once the company decided to go ahead with the project in 1966 (Bilstein, 1984, p. 262).
In contrast, the beginning of the 767 widebody jet was catalyzed by the aging of the airline industry's fleet of jets. By the end of the 1970s:
some 1,200 jet transports out of 4,800 in service outside of Soviet and Soviet-bloc countries were reaching retirement age. Since the sales for new airliners in the 1980s were estimated at $80 billion, this high stakes market generated unusually strong interest among aerospace firms on both sides of the Atlantic (Bilstein, 1984, p. 288).
This paper will be compare and contrast the Boeing 747 and Boeing 767 model jet airliners.
The first ceremonial unveiling of the 747 took place in the fall of 1968. Production deliveries began in December of the following year. Pan Am, impressed by the new plane's specifications, placed the first orders for 25 planes. The 747 planes were remarkable for their new capabilities, but they also posed special problems in logistics and in-flight service:
The logistical aspects of the accommodations for some 490 passengers in a dense seating arrangement posed new problems for passenger cabin staffs. Serving meals--and cleaning up afterward--became a fully orchestrated [event], especially on long-distance flights, when passengers received two, sometimes more, meals en route. Obviously, the oversized passenger sections of a 747 changed the intimate and comradely travel arrangem...