Boeing quietly pulls plug on the 747, closing era of jumbo jets

Re:Boeing quietly pulls plug on the 747, closing era of jumb... by WJW on Thursday July 02, 2020 @05:13PM (#23718135)

IIRC it really depends on the cargo. A very cool example I came across was iPhones being fairly heavy relative to their volume while roses were very light relative to their volume. The solution of the air freight company was to fill their aircraft 50/50 with roses and iPhones so that they were both at their weight limit and at their volume limit.

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Re:Boeing quietly pulls plug on the 747, closing era of jumb... by ravoori on Thursday July 02, 2020 @06:03PM (#23718622)

Ingenious on the part of freight company, but roses being transported halfway around the world is an indicator of what's wrong with modern commerce

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Re:Boeing quietly pulls plug on the 747, closing era of jumb... by yorwba on Thursday July 02, 2020 @07:10PM (#23719122)

iPhones being transported halfway around the world isn't? In both cases the difference in labor cost is large enough to make the flight profitable.

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Re:Boeing quietly pulls plug on the 747, closing era of jumb... by lmm on Thursday July 02, 2020 @09:50PM (#23720320)

It makes sense for there to be only one iphone production line, in the same place as all the factories that make iphone components - shipping the components around and having multiple copies of the production line would probably be more wasteful. That's not really a concern that applies to roses.

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Re:Boeing quietly pulls plug on the 747, closing era of jumb... by megablast on Thursday July 02, 2020 @08:42PM (#23719788)

Yes, since roses can be grown almost anywhere, and they are 100s of replacement for a rose.

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Re:Boeing quietly pulls plug on the 747, closing era of jumb... by JAlexoid on Thursday July 02, 2020 @09:23PM (#23720114)

In theory bananas can be grown anywhere, but I believe biology has other things to say.

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Re:Boeing quietly pulls plug on the 747, closing era of jumb... by CydeWeys on Thursday July 02, 2020 @10:58PM (#23720649)

Bananas aren't flown though. They can be grown in many places, it's just the current supply chain for them is most cost-effective.

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Re:Boeing quietly pulls plug on the 747, closing era of jumb... by Symbiote on Friday July 03, 2020 @03:23AM (#23721792)

Some bananas certainly are flown, although I don't know the proportion of the total.

They were loaded into a flight I was on from Costa Rica to Paris.

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