Joe Sutter, the Boeing Co. engineer who ushered in the modern era of long-range travel by spearheading the 747 jumbo jet in the 1960s, has died. He was 95.
“Joe lived an amazing life and was an inspiration – not just to those of us at Boeing, but to the entire aerospace industry,” Ray Conner, chief executive officer of Boeing’s commercial airplane division, told employees in a message announcing the death Tuesday. “He personified the ingenuity and passion for excellence that made Boeing airplanes synonymous with quality the world over.”
The 747 was the capstone of a career spanning the twilight of piston-engine airliners to Boeing’s rivalry with Airbus Group four decades later. Starting with a swept-wing prototype in 1954 paving the way for the first U.S. jetliner, Sutter’s stamp was visible on aircraft through the 757 and 767 in the 1980s.
“He was a great engineer,” said Phil Condit, a former chief executive officer of Boeing who was once a member of Sutter’s 747 engineering group. “He dearly, dearly loved that airplane.”
Like the 747, Sutter was a throwback to a time when large, physical products defined U.S. innovation. With Boeing’s survival on the line, Sutter led a team that crafted the jet in less than two-and-a-half years even as he defied the design wishes of the first buyer: Juan Trippe, the Pan American World Airways founder who was then the most powerful person in aviation.
“The aircraft was iconic and so was he,” Richard Aboulafia, a Fairfax, Virginia-based aerospace analyst, said of Sutter. “It was a time of moonshots.”
Sutter retired in 1986 at age 65 as executive vice president in charge of Boeing’s commercial airplane engineering and product development. He served as a senior adviser emeritus for a quarter-century, regularly stopping by a Seattle-area office into his 90s.