Flughafen Frankfurt am Main (Frankfurt Airport), Frankfurt, Hesse, Germany, 2012

This is Frankfurt am Main airport, the main, literally, airport for Frankfurt, Germany. I don't know if that Boeing 747 is a 400 or an 8I, but Lufthansa were the launch customer for the 8I, and the next time I was in Frankfurt there were quite a lot of them already. This is in spite of the fact that Lufthansa have also bought a fleet of Airbus A380's. Many newspapers lately have referred to the "aging" 747-8I, and claiming that Boeing will soon discontinue them. However, as journalists often don't do their homework, they ignore that if a platform is the basis for what is "aging," then the 737, never criticized by them, is even more "aging," having been introduced two years earlier, in 1968. The 737-900 and the 747-8I variants of these aircraft, however, are arguably state-of-the-art, and much more reliable than the much touted (but just as criticized) 787-800. Boeing have slowed 747 production, which may make short-term business sense, but it seems like they should be working on fixing the 787-800, rather than releasing the new 787-900 before the older one is ready, or pouring money into the 797, which hasn't even flown yet (in spite of some hoax photographs). Officially, in fact, the 797 is still the "7x7," as it isn't even an official catalog item yet.