Aviation: Countdown to the end: SQ announces its last B747 flight

Of course, everyone new it was coming. Over recent months, Frankfurt, New York, Tokyo, Paris, London and other destinations have seen the B747 replaced by newer, smarter, cheaper to run aircraft, some with better efficiency, some with more passengers. The prime mover has, of course been the Airbus A380 although other aircraft also substitute.

And the change has happened much later than expected: the well publicised delays in A380 delivery were one major factor; the blowing up of an engine on a Qantas A380 just off Singapore was another.

SQ has not let the B747 rot: its first and business class cabins are up to date - but cannot compare to the suites aboard the A380. Even so, it has some of the best interiors in the sky.

But for those crew who have built up a fellowship over the past year or so, to fall back into the general pool of crew, who rarely fly with anyone they know other than in passing, the change will be difficult. It will be made all the more so because, as the team has shrunk and the time since they were the last or nearly last to be trained, they have grown in seniority together. An SQ B747 crew has no new recruits on board: everyone has at least four years' experience. and in the airline industry where there is a high attrition rate in the early years, that's quite long in the tooth.

All the B747 crew are trained on other aircraft, including the A380 and fly those other aircraft regularly. But it's the B747 - old, creaky, inconvenient, not too well designed from a crew's point of view - that they have got used to and will miss.

The benefits of being the last ones standing on the Jumbo have gone beyond the friendships: the B747 team has been rostered onto the same destinations over and over again, allowing them to gain familiarity with those destinations. They know where to shop, where to eat, drink and be safe. They like that. They like the fact that they know the hotel staff where they stay.

Oddly, in a world where anchors are difficult to find, the last B747 crew found comfort in that familiarity. And that, as much as the loss of the team spirit, that they will find difficult.

When the last B747 flies out to Melbourne on 24 March, it will leave its final outbound crew there, to fly back on the replacement aircraft. The plane itself will turn around and fly back to Singapore the same day, with a crew that flew out to Melbourne the previous day.

And then, when it touches down, the last of SQ's remaining three Jumbos will discharge its passengers and crew for the last time, ending an era starting in 1973 in which, at one time, Singapore Airlines had the largest fleet of Boeing B747s anywhere in the world.