Originally Posted by jwillett13

The other day I ferried a 747-200 from HKG to SXZ. Its about a 15 min flight across the bay and we had very little gas onboard. Our normal takeoff weight is 833,000 lbs, that night we were at about 365,000. The 200,000 lbs of thrust coming from those GE engines made it get up and go or as we like to say climbed like a raped ape. Even though I had the throttles pulled way back (FLEX power) for t/o we shot up over 6000 feet per min. So the level off at 4500 ft came very quickly. I dont think we used more than 3000 ft of runway. Needless to say the flight was so short it was a handful that night and I dont recall ever have the throttles ever pulled back that far for cruise.