In the early morning of January 22, 1970, 335 passengers boarded Pan American World Airways Flight 2 at Terminal 3 of John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, bound for Heathrow Airport in London. The flight had been scheduled to depart the night before and by this point was over 6 hours behind schedule, but any irritation on that score would have been largely offset by the excitement of the historic nature of this flight — this was the first passenger flight of Boeing’s latest aircraft model, the Boeing 747. At two-thirds the length of a football field, a tail rising six stories up, and interior dimensions more reminiscent of a large conference room than an aircraft cabin, the 747 was the largest aircraft ever to enter airline service, dwarfing all other existing airliners, and would remain so for the next 37 years.
Just after 2:00 a.m., Clipper Victor (N736PA), the 12th 747 off the production line, departed from New York and headed towards London. 6 hours and 43 minutes later, Clipper Victor touched down at London’s Heathrow Airport at 1:35 p.m. local time, cementing a milestone in aviation history. The completion of the inaugural flight marked the culmination of years of hard work by a team of engineers and test pilots who had been responsible for getting the mammoth 747 designed, built, and into the air safely.