Korean Air Boeing 747 Returns to US: The place the Well-known Jet Nonetheless Flies

Korean Air will not cease flying the world’s longest Boeing 747 flight in spite of everything.

The airline stopped flying the jumbo jet between Seoul and Atlanta — a 7,153-mile trek and the world’s longest for the airplane sort — in March, however has introduced it again as its alternative, the 777, simply cannot sustain with demand.

Flight knowledge from the aviation analytics firm Cirium exhibits the 747 returned on April 25 and April 27 and can fuly take over from Could 7 by means of August 31. The 777 will take over once more in September.

A Korean Air spokesperson instructed Enterprise Insider that the choice was primarily based on demand and that the 747 might return once more sooner or later after its seasonal run.

Korean’s double-decker jet can carry as much as 368 passengers, in comparison with the 227 to 338 seats on the 777, relying on the configuration.

Korean stays simply considered one of 4 airways flying the 747 in 2025

Carriers globally are phasing out the well-known “Queen of the Skies” in favor of more cost effective twin-engine widebodies.

Cirium knowledge exhibits Air China, Korean Air, Lufthansa, and Russian provider Rossiya Airways have about 18,600 collective 747 flights scheduled this 12 months on 37 routes.

That is a 75% lower from the almost 76,000 scheduled flights throughout 25 carriers in 2019 earlier than the COVID-19 pandemic.

Lufthansa’s greater than two dozen 747 jets are anticipated to cowl 21 routes from Frankfurt in 2025, totaling about 12,000 flights, per Cirium. That is about 65% of 2025’s whole scheduled 747 flights.

The airline is retrofitting the plane with new seats, an funding that indicators a dedication to preserving the fleet in service.

Air China’s roughly 4,100 scheduled flights will cowl 5 routes from Beijing, Korean’s about 2,000 scheduled flights will cowl seven routes from Seoul, and Rossiya’s about 470 scheduled flights will cowl 4 home routes from Moscow.

Korean’s flight to Tokyo has only one round-trip scheduled for Could. The identical goes for Rossiya’s one-off flights to Kaliningrad and the jap Russian city of Magadan.

Rossiya is a subsidiary of Russian flag provider Aeroflot and restarted 747 operations in 2024, prone to benefit from the 522-seat capability as Western sanctions restrict Russia’s out there planes.

Cirium knowledge exhibits a majority of Rossiya’s 2025 routes are set to fly to the nation’s Far East. This implies the huge 747s are helpful not only for tourism but in addition for cargo within the distant Russian area.

Air China runs the longest and shortest 747 flights by time

Though not the longest by distance, Air China’s service from New York to Beijing is the longest passenger 747 trek by flight time at about 17 hours. It covers 6,838 miles.

By comparability, Korean’s route from Atlanta to Seoul is about 15 hours. Westbound flying usually takes longer than eastbound due to the jetstream’s headwinds.

Air China additionally operates the shortest repeatedly scheduled 747 flight by distance and time in 2025, flying simply two and a half hours throughout 667 miles between Beijing and Shanghai.

In keeping with knowledge from OAG, the route’s almost 7.8 million out there seats ranked it among the many world’s prime 10 busiest home flights in 2024.