SEATTLE: On Tuesday, as thousands of employees who had worked on the planes for the previous 55 years watched, Boeing said goodbye to an icon by delivering its final 747 jumbo jet.

The enormous yet elegant 747 has performed a variety of roles since its initial flight in 1969, including carrying cargo, transporting NASA's space shuttles, and serving as the Air Force One presidential aircraft. It revolutionized transportation, opening up previously inaccessible direct routes between international cities and assisting in the democratization of passenger flight.

However, over the past 15 years or so, Boeing and Airbus, a competitor in Europe, have developed more lucrative and fuel-efficient wide-body aircraft, with only two engines to maintain as opposed to the 747's four. The last aircraft was produced by Boeing in Washington's Puget Sound region, making it the 1,574th overall.

Tuesday's ceremony to celebrate the delivery of the final 747 to cargo carrier Atlas Air was attended by thousands of employees, executives from Boeing and other organizations from around the world, as well as actor and pilot John Travolta.

“Nobody wants a four-engine airliner anymore, but that doesn`t erase the tremendous contribution the aircraft made to the development of the industry or its remarkable legacy," said longtime aviation analyst Richard Aboulafia.

"Nobody wants a four-engine airliner, but that doesn't erase the enormous contribution aviation has made to the development of the industry and its incredible legacy," said longtime aviation analyst Richard Aboulafia.

After missing out on the opportunity to build the C-5A, a sizable military transport, Boeing decided to build the 747. The plan was to utilize the high-bypass turbofan engines created for the transport, which burned less fuel by passing air around the engine core and allowed for a longer flight range, for a newly envisioned civilian aircraft.

The first 747 was produced by more than 50,000 Boeing employees in less than 16 months, a Herculean effort that earned them the moniker "The Incredibles." The world's largest building by volume, a massive factory had to be built in Everett, north of Seattle, in order to produce the jumbo jet.

Desi Evans, 92, who began working for Boeing in 1957 at its Renton, Washington, factory and spent 38 years there before retiring, was present.

His boss informed him that he would be joining the 747 program in Everett the following morning, which was in 1967. "They advised me to wear rubber boots, a hard hat, and warm clothing because the area was covered in mud," Evans recalled.

"And it was — they were preparing for the factory's construction." He was given the responsibility of supervising crews that worked on sealing and painting the aircraft after first assisting with the installation of the passenger cabin's interior.

“When that very first 747 rolled out, it was an incredible time,” he said as he stood before the last plane, parked outside the factory.

The design of the aircraft included a second deck that reached back over the first third of the aircraft from the cockpit, giving it a distinctive hump and earning it the moniker "Whale."

Even the lower deck occasionally had lounges or even a piano bar, as some airlines converted it into a first-class cocktail lounge. A defunct 747 that was originally constructed in 1976 for Singapore Airlines has been transformed into a 33-room hotel close to the airport in Stockholm.

Guillaume de Syon, an aviation and mobility expert at Pennsylvania's Albright College, said, "It was the first big carrier, the first wide body, so it set a new standard for airlines to figure out what to do with it, and how to fill it."

“It became the essence of mass air travel: You could`t fill it with people paying full price, so you needed to lower prices to get people onboard." It contributed to what happened in the late 1970s with the deregulation of air travel.”

According to Aboulafia, the timing of the introduction of the first 747 on Pan Am's New York-London route in 1970 was terrible. It made its debut during a recession that saw Boeing's employment drop from 100,800 employees in 1967 to a low of 38,690 employees in April 1971, just before the 1973 oil crisis. The infamous "Boeing bust" was commemorated by a billboard that read, "Will the last person leaving Seattle Turn out the lights," It was located close to the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport.

The 747-400 series, an updated model that debuted in the late 1980s, was much better timed to coincide with the early 1990s Asian economic boom, according to Aboulafia. In 1991, he traveled as a 20-something backpacker from Los Angeles to Hong Kong on a Cathay Pacific 747.

"Even people like me could travel to Asia," claimed Aboulafia. Although some other foreign airlines, including the German airline Lufthansa, still fly the 747, Delta was the last American airline to use it for passenger flights, which ended in 2017.

Carsten Spohr, CEO of Lufthansa, recalled flying in a 747 when he was a young exchange student and remarked that there was only one way to travel from Frankfurt to San Francisco for Tuesday's event: first-class in the nose of a Lufthansa 747. He assured the crowd that Lufthansa would continue operating the 747 for a very long time.

He remarked, "We just adore the airplane.

Early last year, Atlas Air placed an order for four 747-8 freighters, and the last one—emblazoned with a picture of Joe Sutter, the engineer who oversaw the original design team for the 747—was delivered on Tuesday. The 747 is the best air freighter, according to Atlas CEO John Dietrich, in part because it can load through the nose cone.