Incredible footage shows the extreme testing pilots put Boeing 747-8 through

The Boeing 747-8 will go down in history as one of the best and most widely produced airliners ever.

And there’s clearly a reason for that.

As you can see from this clip, pilots put the plane through some pretty extreme testing to make sure it could withstand just about anything you could throw at it.

READ MORE: Boeing 737 vs Airbus A320: which is the best commercial plane in the world?

In the video, which was shared by Boeing themselves on YouTube, the plane can be seen while being dragged, dropped, soaked, forced to hover, shudder and flutter.

This was standard practice, believe it or not, to make sure the plane could withstand all kinds of external stress.

Boeing 747-8 is the last of a dying breed

Through the years, the 747 has been used as the world’s largest commercial aircraft, as a freighter, and even the U.S. President has ordered one (yet to be delivered, apparently).

And the U.S. President isn’t the only person who wanted to use one as a private jet, because Boeing also built a handful of units for private use.

That’s the case with the Boeing 747-8 BBJ ordered by Saudi Arabia.

Boeing built 155 units, most of which are still in service, but sooner or later all those planes will have to retire, ending a saga that began in 1969 with the first 747.

The 747 is so good even Boeing can’t create a better one

Boeing is currently having ‘issues’ that are all over the news but before that, it was clear that the American aerospace company was struggling to replace it.

They tried with the 787 Dreamliner, which Boeing says can be built in two days, and then again with the 777, but they both failed to capture the essence of the 747.

We should also point out that the rise of Airbus as a credible market competitor certainly didn’t help Boeing.

In the 1970s and 1980s, it wasn’t even a competition.

Boeing was delivering hundreds of aircraft every year, while Airbus was delivering 30 or 40 at the most.

But that began to change in the 1990s, when Boeing was still outselling Airbus year in year out, but the gap was nowhere as wide as before.

Then, between the 1990s and the 2000s, Airbus began receiving more orders, and – more importantly – they were faster when it came to actually delivering those planes.

In 2024, Airbus has already delivered 246 planes, while Boeing only delivered 103.

It’ll be interesting to see what the chart looks like in 10, 20 or 50 years.