Memories fly aboard Cathay Pacific’s last 747 flight
“It’s not just another plane,” says a lucky passenger who took the 747’s final flight from Tokyo to Hong Kong. As Cathay Pacific retires the Boeing 747, we take a look at the jumbo jet that captured the hearts and imaginations of millions of people around the world
Captain John Graham has good reason to feel a rush of nostalgia as he takes his seat in the cockpit for the last Cathay Pacific Boeing 747 passenger flight. He has flown this iconic aircraft for more than 30 years and this very machine was the setting for a meeting that turned his life upside down.
“This is a bittersweet moment for me. I love this aircraft,” he tells passengers as he prepares to take off from a rain-swept Haneda Airport, in Tokyo, Japan. “On a personal note, this is the aircraft I met my wife on. She is here with me on the flight deck so we’re having quite an emotional time up here.”
Graham and his wife met 12 years ago, he explains, after we touchdown in Hong Kong. “One day on a flight to LA, the cockpit door opened and this beautiful face said, ‘Captain, would you like a cup of tea?’” he recalls. Standing coyly beside him, Patsy seems embarrassed and flattered in equal measure.
“I was really quite touched,” she smiles. “I didn’t think he’d make that announcement on the plane.”
This love story seems a fitting send-off for the 747 – an aircraft that captured people’s hearts and imaginations in a way no other has before or since, with the possible exception of Concorde. The jumbo jet began life in an age when people wore suits to fly, air travel was exclusive and mysterious, half of the passengers lit up cigarettes as soon as the seat belt sign went out and the lives of captains and flight attendants seemed impossibly glamorous.
