Airbus had been making all the noise about new-generation jumbos, but that was about to change. In June 1991, just before the Paris Air Show, it was revealed that United Airlines chairman Stephen Wolf had asked Boeing to study United’s requirement for a 650-seat transpacific aircraft. Dubbed the N650, the requirement galvanized Boeing into action and triggered a bizarre series of events, the effects of which forever altered the face of civil aviation, and which are still being felt today.
Boeing took United’s request very seriously despite the fact that only 17 months earlier it had launched the 777 on the back of a launch order from the massive Chicago-based carrier. Within a few days of United’s request, Boeing began to sketch a series of three main concepts: a stretched 747, a full double-deck variant of the 747, and a clean-sheet design. The first details of Boeing’s response came at the Paris Air Show, where the company’s executive vice president, Phil Condit, said: “We fully intend to compete in that double-deck version market.”
Boeing also appointed a former marketing vice president, John Hayhurst, as vice president for large aircraft development. To Hayhurst, the writing was on the wall for a new-generation jumbo, particularly when Boeing had forecast in 1991 that 54 percent of the value of the commercial market up to 2005, or roughly $334 billion, was for 350-seaters and upward. “We believe we can fulfill that by a combination of 747- and 777-sized aircraft as well as a requirement for an aircraft larger than the 747-400,” said Hayhurst. “We have had a number of product developments aimed at this, ranging from stretches of the 747-400 to all-new aircraft. What we’re doing is bringing together all the efforts we’ve had up to now and focusing them to find out what the market needs are for this segment and then to design it.” The simplest option, the proposed 747 stretch, was slightly larger than the -400, a tried-and-tested Boeing formula used on everything from the 707 onward.