It's as tall as a 6-story building,

2/3 as long as an American football field, and it's made of 6 million parts.

And oh, yeah, it flies.

In fact, early versions have carried more than 5½ billion people,

the equivalent of 80% of the world's population.

Now Boeing has reinvented the iconic 747,

a task just as monumental as the airplane itself.

[747-8 Engine Integration]

[Grace Balut Ostrom] [Associate Technical Fellow, Boeing Propulsion Controls Group]

The 747-8 is our new version of the 747.

We've changed it. We've upgraded it.

To bring about that change you have to be innovative.

You have to be innovative and creative.

You have to think of new solutions and new methods of

bringing upon the changes that you're looking for.

[narrator] Adding a new wing to a jetliner is a very big task.

Adding 4 gigantic new engines at the same time is like designing a whole new airplane.

Making the job even more challenging,

airlines wanted the 747-8 to feel and fly like Legacy 747s

that pilots and passengers know and love.

This commonality saves airlines millions in flight crew training.

[Ostrom] What my job entails is integrating

a complex system like the engine onto a complex system like an airplane

to make sure that the engine computer communicates with the airplane computers

and the airplane computers work with the engine computers.

[narrator] For a number of reasons, it's essential that the new wing,

engines, and airplane systems work in perfect combination.

That's why the Boeing engine controls team spent months in some

of the most advanced labs of their kind.

The team tested every imaginable scenario before an engine

was ever placed on the wing.

[Ostrom] People don't see behind the scenes

how much work we put into it.

And then we have an extensive flight test program where we

run the system through the wringers.

[narrator] The new Queen of the Skies is called the 747-8

because it's based on 787 technology.

The wing is lighter with greatly improved aerodynamics,

and the engines are the cleanest, quietest, and most fuel-efficient

turbofans ever built for an aircraft of this size.

[Ostrom] On the propulsion side, the 2 big improvements are

fuel efficiency and a 30% reduction in noise

compared to its predecessor, the 747-400.

[narrator] With its new wing and engines, the 747-8

is powerful enough to lift nearly a million pounds and fly

almost 8,000 nautical miles.

But chances are, the only difference most passengers will ever feel

is that their flight is quieter, which for some people is a really good thing.

[Boeing - Copyright@ 2012. All rights reserved]