Most Beautiful Plane - Here's to the Boeing 707
There are a number of interesting posts here about the reliable, workhorse nature of the 707 and the high degree of esteem in which aviation experts hold the plane.
To those comments, I'd like to add that, IMO, it is also the most classically beautiful jet airliner ever built. The 707 is sleek, clean-lined and streamlined, with its slender silver arrow of a fuselage and four long, narrow engines. It is as graceful as a seagull soaring into the air and is a pinnacle of postwar design even when just sitting on the runway.
Probably it's a generational thing; I grew up in the heyday of the 707, when that one plane, all by itself, symbolized the glamour of flying.
To me, today's airliners look bulbous and ungainly by comparison, with their fat fuselages and two huge engines. I know that modern planes are more electronically sophisticated, that the fuselages allow for more passengers to be crammed in, and that engine reliability has improved so much that it's safe even for long-range jets to have only two engines. IOW, I do understand that the 707 is outdated in aviation terms, but I still think it's beautiful.