T_R_Oglodyte
TUG Lifetime Member
And the 737 has also been significant for us as timeshare owners. The 737 has been a major factor in expanding air travel to the masses. When I was a boy, air travel was rare. Most "ordinary" people, such as in the neighborhood where I grew up, never set foot in an airplane.
When families went on vacation, they went by car. And if you couldn't get there by car, you didn't go. Going to a place such as Hawaii or the Caribbean - or even California if you lived in the eastern US - was a fantasy. Maybe something you did once in a lifetime. Boeing changed that, with the 707, then the 727, and now the 737.
Heb Kelleher, the founder of Southwest Airlines, commented that he didn't view other airlines as his competitors. He thought that his competition was the private auto, and his goal was to make traveling by air more sensible than traveling by car.
Boeing’s 737 hits historic milestone: 10,000 planes produced
When families went on vacation, they went by car. And if you couldn't get there by car, you didn't go. Going to a place such as Hawaii or the Caribbean - or even California if you lived in the eastern US - was a fantasy. Maybe something you did once in a lifetime. Boeing changed that, with the 707, then the 727, and now the 737.
Heb Kelleher, the founder of Southwest Airlines, commented that he didn't view other airlines as his competitors. He thought that his competition was the private auto, and his goal was to make traveling by air more sensible than traveling by car.
Boeing’s 737 hits historic milestone: 10,000 planes produced
The proliferation of low-cost flights pioneered by Southwest on the 737 has made flying mundane, if often stressful. But it has also brought a huge expansion of air travel as middle-class people all over the globe embrace flying.
Today, Boeing estimates that more than three million passengers fly on 737s around the world every day.
Southwest’s vice president of maintenance operations, Landon Nitschke, said Tuesday that his airline alone carried 542,000 passengers on one particularly busy day.
Boeing Commercial Airplanes chief executive Kevin McAllister noted that since the jet first entered revenue service, 737s have carried about 23 billion passengers in total.
“When you can carry three times the world’s population in an airplane like this, that’s something to wake up for every day,” he told the assembled employees.