Does anyone remember the Boeing 747 “Super Airbus”?

Once upon a time, the good people at Boeing emblazoned the words ‘747 Super Airbus’ across one of their jumbo jets. Seeing one of the US manufacturer’s aircraft with the name of their now major rival is truly something else.

These aircraft were variants of the original Boeing 747-100, which were properly called the Boeing 747-100SR. The trailing letters denote it is a short-range version of the plane. How did this come about and why “Super Airbus”?

One word – Japan

Japan Air Lines needed the capacity of the Boeing 747 for high density domestic routes. Boeing offered to trade range for capacity and thus a domestic version was born. It featured a beefed up structure to cope with the short flight durations and more frequent flight cycles. Seven were built and delivered between 1973 and 1975.

Later, Boeing offered the Boeing 747-100BSR, a short-range version of the Boeing 747-100B. Twenty were produced from 1978, being delivered to both JAL and All Nippon Airways. Come the 1980s and two more were produced for JAL, this time as Boeing 747-100BSR SUD, featuring the stretched upper deck of the Boeing 747-300. I imagine difficulties with identification kept the plane spotters busy!

The television commercial above shows the international service on board a JAL 747 at the time. The SR had seats for over 500 passengers and with flights being as short as an hour, you can be sure it was not nearly as nice as that!

But why call it a Super Airbus?

At the time, Airbus as we know it today was only just beginning, with the first flight of their A300 taking place in 1972. It entered service after the Boeing 747-100SR, so it has nothing to do with that.

The whole thing was really a concept, a plane like a bus, hence “air bus”. Lots of people using it, lots of frequency and lower cost travel, so that’s what it was essentially. That fits the mission the Boeing 747-100SR was designed for, hence the name.

Overall Thoughts

In total 29 short-range Boeing 747s were produced for Japanese airlines. The Super Airbus moniker appears to have been only painted on one of the jets during testing and prior to delivery to Japan.

The whole programme is an interesting footnote in the storied history of the Boeing 747. In the end, the SRs flew through to the third quarter of 2006, giving them a very long lifespan indeed.

Did you know about the Super Airbus thing? It was news to me that there were stretched upper deck versions of this aircraft, that’s for sure! Thank you for reading and if you have any comments or questions, please leave them below.

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Featured image via Reddit.
Black and white image via Airways Magazine on Threads.
Dream Express by Spaceaero2 via Wikimedia Commons.