Boeing completes the last ever delivery of the iconic 747 jumbo jet

The last Boeing 747 to ever be built has changed hands in front of thousands of people who wanted to say goodbye to the iconic widebody plane. Customers, suppliers, celebrities, as well as current and former employees — including the original staff known as the “Incredibles” who built the first 747 — gathered at the company’s Everett factory to witness Boeing delivering the plane to Atlas Air Worldwide. The event marks the plane’s end of production since it was first built in 1967. 

Boeing revealed back in 2020 that it was going to retire the model in a couple of years after it was done building the last orders for it. The 747 was one of the most famous four-engine widebody jets in the world and revolutionized air travel by doubling passenger capacity and thereby lowering the price of each seat. During the peak of its popularity in 1990, Boeing delivered 70 units in a single year. But like most older technologies, it eventually took a backseat to some of the company’s newer jets, particularly its two-engine planes that can fly the same routes but can use fuel more efficiently. 

As Reuters notes, the company only delivered five 747s in 2022, though the whole program itself produced 1,574 jets. The last planes Boeing delivered, including this one, will be used to transport cargo in the years to come. Yes, we won’t be seeing any new 747 anymore, but Bloomberg says the orders delivered for freighter use could be around until the 2050s. 

Boeing Commercial Airplanes CEO Stan Deal said in a statement:

“This monumental day is a testament to the generations of Boeing employees who brought to life the airplane that ‘shrank the world,’ and revolutionized travel and air cargo as the first widebody. It is fitting to deliver this final 747-8 Freighter to the largest operator of the 747, Atlas Air, where the ‘Queen’ will continue to inspire and empower innovation in air cargo.”

Kim Smith, Boeing’s VP and general manager for the 747 and 767 programs, revealed that the model’s production line shut down as workers finished building different parts for the last plane. Employees who worked on in the factory have now been transferred to other programs or have voluntarily retired. 

Two men allegedly hacked JFK’s taxi dispatch system with Russian help

Would you pay a few bucks to skip an interminably long taxi wait line at the airport? That’s essentially what Daniel Abayev and Peter Leyman did, according to the DOJ, except they focused on taxi drivers. The two men, both from Queens, have been arrested for hacking into JFK’s taxi dispatch system with the help of Russian nationals. From September 2019 and September 2021, they charged drivers $10 to jump ahead of JFK’s taxi queue. Typically, those cars are sent out depending on their order of arrival.

“For years, the defendants’ hacking kept honest cab drivers from being able to pick up fares at JFK in the order in which they arrived,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement. “Now, thanks to this Office’s teamwork with the Port Authority, these defendants are facing serious criminal charges for their alleged cybercrimes.”

According to the DOJ’s indictment, both men explored a variety of ways to break into JFK’s taxi dispatch system, from bribing people to insert a malware-filled flash drive into a computer, stealing tablets and logging into the system over Wi-Fi. Abayev at one point messaged one of the Russian hackers: “I know that the Pentagon is being hacked[.]. So, can’t we hack the taxi industry[?]”

The pair used chat threads to communicate with drivers, some of whom also had their $10 fee waived if they could recruit others. Abayev and Leyman have been charged with two counts of conspiracy to commit computer intrusion, which carry a maximum 10-year sentence in prison. Their story follows a spate of Russian cyberattacks over the last ten years, including the infamous hack on Florida’s voter databases in 2016, a decade-long malware scheme to steal millions, and the theft of NATO data in 2014.