Boeing bet the entire company on the 747 — and laid off 60,000 workers before it paid off

In 1966, Boeing's chairman Bill Allen committed the company to building the 747 — the first wide-body jet, designed to carry 400 passengers at a time when the largest aircraft carried 180. The development cost was $1 billion (about $8 billion today), more than Boeing's net worth. The company borrowed heavily and built a new factory in Everett, Washington — the largest building in the world by volume.

The bet was concentrated: the 747 was not one product in a portfolio, it was the company's entire future. When the 1969–1970 recession hit, airline orders collapsed. Boeing's workforce in the Seattle area fell from 100,000 to 38,000. The 'Boeing bust' emptied the city — a billboard near the airport read: 'Will the last person leaving Seattle turn out the lights?'

The 747 eventually succeeded: it dominated long-haul travel for 40 years and became the most iconic aircraft in history. But the factory-floor story, as the workers tell it, is not the triumph. It is the three years when the company that had bet everything on the plane could not sell it, and the people who had built it could not find work. The bet was right; the timing nearly killed the company that made it.