N863GT: the last Boeing 747 ever built

Boeing announced in July 2020 that 747 production would end once the remaining orders were built. Demand for four-engine airliners had been falling for years, and the passenger 747-8 Intercontinental had sold only 48 copies against 107 freighters. Atlas Air, the world's largest 747 operator, ordered the final four 747-8Fs in January 2021 so that the line would close with freighters for a customer that would actually fly them.

The last airframe rolled out of the Everett factory on December 6, 2022, and the delivery on January 31, 2023 was treated as the end of an era. Boeing painted a decal on the nose honoring Joe Sutter, the engineer who led the original 747 design team and died in 2016, with the words "Forever Incredible." Atlas named the aircraft *Empower*. The ceremony closed a production run that began in 1967 with a factory built in a forest north of Seattle because nothing large enough existed anywhere else.

N863GT flies for Atlas Air under a long-term arrangement with Apex Logistics, a Kuehne+Nagel freight forwarder, and wears a hybrid Atlas and Apex livery. Its routes follow the air-cargo map: Hong Kong, Shanghai and other Chinese gateways, Anchorage as the transpacific fuel stop, Chicago, Los Angeles, Miami, Amsterdam, Liège and the Middle East. Cargo schedules change weekly, so the live panel is the only reliable way to know where it is; a typical week includes a transpacific rotation and a European or South American leg.

The 747-8F is the longest 747 and the heaviest production version, with a nose door that opens for outsized freight and GEnx engines shared with the 787. Boeing expects the freighter fleet to fly into the 2040s, so the last 747 built is likely to be among the last 747s flying.

Look for a 747-8F with the Atlas Air tail and "Apex Logistics" titles, and the decal of Joe Sutter's face on the left side of the nose below the cockpit windows. On the tracker it broadcasts the registration N863GT and Atlas callsigns beginning GTI. The 747-8F has no upper-deck windows beyond the cockpit and a hinged nose; the raked wingtips and the chevrons on the engine nacelles separate it from the older 747-400F.