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Boeing 737 Classic

airliner family

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 17, 2026
Entity authorityQ2355950 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Boeing 737 Classic is a series of narrow-body airliners produced by Boeing Commercial Airplanes, the second generation of the Boeing 737 series of aircraft.

Development began in 1979 and the first variant, the 737-300, first flew in February 1984 and entered service that December.

The stretched 737-400 first flew in February 1988 and entered service later that year. The shortest variant, the 737-500, first flew in June 1989 and entered service in 1990.

Compared to the original series, the classic series was re-engined with the CFM56, a high-bypass turbofan, for better fuel economy and had upgraded avionics.

With a 133,500–150,000 lb (60.6–68.0 t) MTOW, it has a range of 2,060 to 2,375 nautical miles [nmi] (3,815 to 4,398 km; 2,371 to 2,733 mi).

At 102 feet (31 m) the -500 is similar in length to the original 737-200 and can fly 110 to 132 passengers.

The 110-foot-long (34 m) -300 can seat 126 to 149 passengers while the 120-foot-long (37 m) -400 accommodates 147 to 168 seats.

It competed with the McDonnell Douglas MD-80 series, then with the Airbus A320 family which prompted Boeing to update its offer with the 737 Next Generation, thus designating the -300/400/500 variants as the 737 Classic.

In total, 1,988 aircraft were delivered from 1984 until production ended in the year 2000: 1,113 -300s, 486 -400s and 389 -500s.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Boeing 737 Classic” is airliner family. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Boeing, Classic and airliner, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA practical starting point whose main value is the path it opens into stronger specialist and primary sources. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1979, 1984, 1988, 1989—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. For this dossier, Boeing, Classic and airliner is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “airliner family” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 17, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q2355950. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1979, 1984, 1988 and 1989.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

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  2. Expand the search: follow Boeing 737 Classic primary sources, Boeing 737 Classic archive and Boeing research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Boeing 737 Classic” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.