Category AN AIRIINE AN0 ITS AIRCRAFT

Jack Frye had joined Hanshue
when Standard Airlines merged
with W. A.E. He became president
ofT. W.A., succeeding Robbins.

Frye since Standard’s foundation.
He continued to serve as Jack’s
right-hand man for several years.

Richard Robbins, acting as
umpire between W. A.E. and T. A.T.,
was president of P. A.I. C., the
catalyst to the merger.

Charles Lindbergh was ТА. T. ’s

technical consultant and unoffi­cial chief pilot. He continued to advise T. W. A. for the next decade.

TWO TRANSCONTINENTAL AIR SERVICES DAILY

The Competition

American Airways If the T. W.A. Shotgun Marriage was difficult to negotiate, the industrial sparring that resulted in the creation of American Airways was, even without coercion from the Postmaster General, labyrinthine. The airline itself cannot trace every individual component that comprised the eventual amalga­mation of three groups, themselves the result of mergers and take-overs. Universal Aviation Corporation (the real core of the route system). Southern Air Transport, and Colonial Airways Corporation completed their multi-merger to form American Airways on 25 January 1930. United Air Lines The Boeing airplane company had always taken a keen interest in air transport, and had been one of the very first Post Office contractors, with a foreign air mail route from Seattle to Victoria, B. C., in 1919. It had won the best air mail contract in 1926, with the coveted “Columbia” San Fran – cisco-Chicago trunk route and with its own Boeing Air Transport, to which it supplied the aircraft. With the Pratt & Whitney engine company, it formed the United Aircraft and Transport Corporation on 1 February 1929, at the same time absorbing various aircraft and aviation-related manufacturing companies. Acquiring Pacific Air Trans­port, Varney Air Lines, and National Air Transport (winning the latter after a bitter boardroom battle on 7 May 1930), the lines started to operate as United Air Lines, a name that was was formally incorporated on 1 July 1931. Giants of Their Time In the developing U. S. airline world during its heady forma­tive years, some men, who had started at the bottom rung, climbed the corporate ladder to become leaders, and were to influence substantially the course of airline development. C. R. Smith, who was American’s president for twenty or more years and who was head of military air transport during the Second World War. had started as an accountant with one of Southern Air Transport’s ancestors. W. R. “Pat” Patter­son, who led United, had started in similar fashion with Pacific Air Transport. Jack Frye, who was to direct T. W.A.’s fortunes from its beginnings until after the War. had started Standard Air Lines, but stayed with Western Air Express when American Airways bought Standard on 15 July 1930. T. W.A. was now one of the most important airlines in the United States, and became known, even in official circles at the C. A.B., as one of the ‘Big Four.’

During the early 1930s, before the advent of the modem airliner, the Introduced in the early 1930s, the Pilgrim 100A was quickly competition was still using biplanes, such as this Boeing superseded in American Airlines service by the introduction of B-80A with United Air Lines. modern airliners such as the DC-2.

^New York ^Philadelphia Washington

San Francisco

Kansas City

TWA

Los Angeles

AMERICAN x/ 9" AP [Dallas

Ъ Miami

Postmaster-General Walter Brown’s grand plan came to fruition in 1930. Three transcontinental airlines, together with Eastern, came to be known as ‘The Big Four. ’ Northwest Airlines did not complete its coast-to-coast service until 1944.

Spanning an Era

Like its Douglas rivals, the Lockheed Constellation, from its first military Model C-69 to its ultimate development, the Model 1649A, was truly representative of the entire genera­tion of four-piston-engined airliners that dominated the airline scene for a dozen years after the Second World War. They had their troubles and the turbo-compound engines in the later models were a continual problem. Pan American once flew a Connie from New York to Burbank on three engines, just to change the fourth. T. W.A. kept an engine­carrying airplane in Paris for several years to service the frequent replacement needs in Europe and beyond (see page 56). But, supported energetically by T. W.A. throughout its life-span, Lockheed kept pace with technological progress, and was often the front-runner. The 1649A Starliner, or “Jetstream Starliner”, was the ultimate long-range piston – engined airliner. One version, the turboprop Model 1249A never went into service, but with a speed of 440 mph, could claim to be the fastest propeller-driven airliner ever built.

Distinguished Company

One claim for the record books, if not fame, was of an inci­dent in 1944, soon after Hughes and Frye had presented the C-69 to the Washington hierarchy. It had been flown to the Wright-Patterson Air Force Base at Dayton, the home of the Wright brothers. Orville Wright was invited to take a ride. Not only that, he spent half an hour in the pilot’s seat, thus giving the Constellation the honor of being the only com­mercial airliner to have been flown by the pioneer of flight, who first took to the air on 7 December 1903 at Kitty Hawk. North Carolina.

Constellation Models

Elegant Development

The curvaceous Connies were always a picture of elegance, even though the engineers preferred the relative simplicity of the parallel-fuselage Douglas DC-6Bs. Its performance, in speed and range, could not be surpassed. Each stage of devel­opment, with increased engine power, increased tankage, and increased all-up weight: all these permitted higher payloads, longer range, and modest increases in speed. These resulted, for T. W.A., the claim to have flown the first non-stop transcontinental scheduled service, and later, the first non­stop trans-Atlantic service on a regular and sustained basis.

The Memory

Along with the Douglas DC-7C “Seven Seas,” the 1649A began to bow out when the Bristol Britannia “Whispering Giant” came on the scene in 1957. It was bigger, smoother, and faster than any of the Constellations. Howard Hughes would have bought 20 Britannias, had he known about them sooner, and if Bristol had been able to deliver them at short notice. But the death-knell was the arrival of the jet airliners. The harbinger was the ill-fated Comet 1 in 1952-54, then the Comet 4 and the dominating Boeing 707 in October 1958. All the piston-engined propeller airliners disappeared from the world’s main air routes in an extraordinarily short time. Pan American, especially, covered the globe, and all the U. S. air­lines brought the jets into service very quickly.

But the memory remains. The Save-a-Connie Airline History Museum at Kansas City (formerly known as the Save-a-Connie Foundation) volunteer organization preserves that memory with a beautifully-restored 1049H, which is kept in flying condition, more than four decades after it was first built (see picture, page 58)

Global Affiliations

The Lockheed Constellation created an airliner dynasty. Its operational life with T. W.A. also coincided with a period during which the airline, under Hughes’s enterprising leader­ship, and Jack Frye’s and Ralph Damon’s presidencies, aspired to challenge the incumbent international Chosen Instrument, the great Pan American Airways. Pan Am’s leader, Juan Trippe, was almost omnipotent, but Howard Hughes was a worthy opponent. In addition to the technical and operational irritants with which T. W.A. Constellations constantly provoked Pan Am’s Douglases, Hughes and Frye—taking a leaf out of Trippe’s own book—expanded their operational territory and influence by either buying into, or assisting in operational and managerial support of quite a number of foreign airlines. Interestingly, the benefits for T. W.A. during those exploratory years appear to have been an early example of shareholding interests, quasi-alliances, and code-sharing agreements that are with us today.

The Big Boeing

Just as it had done in 1955, when Pan American ordered 45 jet airliners, to launch the Jet Age in earnest, Juan Trippe did it again in 1965, by persuading the Seattle manufacturer to build the Boeing 747, another airliner that was twice as big as its predecessor. Paradoxically, Pan Am was to acquire too many 747s too quickly, but having been persuaded, Boeing went on to build more than a thousand “Jumbo Jets”—and is still building them 35 years later, an amazing tribute to a great design.

On 2 September 1966 T. W.A. placed a large order for Boeing aircraft and this included 12 747s. At the time, like most large airlines, confidence was high. During that summer, service had been resumed to Bangkok, and extended to Hong Kong. On 6 April 1967 the last Constellation was retired from domestic service and on 11 May the very last of that famous airliner was withdrawn from overseas routes. T. W.A. was the first major U. S. domestic airline to become all-jet. In the same year, riding high, it acquired the Hilton Hotel chain on 9 May, and placed another multi-million dollar Boeing order on 18 October, to augment the 747 fleet to 34. T. W.A.’s Jumbo Jets entered service on 25 February 1970, on the premier transcontinental route, Los Angeles – New York, and on 18 March on the world’s most prestigious intercontinental route, New York-London.

Pacific Interlude

For several years, the Civil Aeronautics Board had been wrestling with two important issues, the trans-Pacific and the associated Hawaii Route Cases. The U. S.trans-Pacific traffic had hitherto been shared between Pan American and North­west to Asia, Pan Am only to Australasia, and Pan Am, North­west, and United to Hawaii. Now, other airlines wanted a piece of this lucrative cake, and T. W.A. was one of them. President Johnson signed the Pacific Route Case on 19 December 1968 and the Hawaii Case on 4 January 1969, just before he left office. The incoming President Nixon promptly amended the choice of airlines and routes, but T. W.A. never­theless received its share, and opened service on 1 August 1969. This enabled the airline to complete a round-the-world service, with Boeing 707s, on 31 October 1971.

The route was not as successful as expected because of strong competition and the consequent excessive capacity offered. Accordingly, T. W.A. and Pan American entered into a route standardization agi’eement on 16 October 1974, and T. W.A. suspended its Pacific route on 2 March 1975.

Capacity Sharing

The Pacific agreement with Pan Am was symptomatic of a problem that had resulted from the enormous increase in the capacity offered world-wide by the influx of the 360-seat 747s, augmented by the 270-seat Douglas DC-10 and Lock­heed L-1011 tri-jets. The problem was also acute in the U. S.A., where, for example, three airlines all offered a 9 a. m. departure from New York to Los Angeles—all at a disastrous 35% or so load factor.

On the initiative of Mel Brenner, T. W.A.’s advocate for common sense in a strictly regulated environment which was supposed to encourage competition, the C. A.B. and the Justice Department agreed, on 21 December 1970, to a capacity scheduling agreement, so that the airlines could continue to compete without cutting each other’s throats. This sensible T. W.A. initiative was appreciated on all sides, and was a har­binger of an even more liberal approach to the problem, one that was solved by the Airline Deregulation Act, signed by President Carter on 24 October 1978. T. W.A. would, in years to come, face fresh challenges, fierce competition, and threats to its very existence.(p. 90)

The Condor

The Curtiss Condor was the last large biplane built in the United States. T. A.T. put it into service early in 1929, and until the Douglas DC-2 came along, it supplemented the Fords on routes where the traffic demand was high. It was much bigger, weighing nine tons against the Ford’s six, and could carry more people with a more attractive cabin. But it was not much faster, and its life span with the United States airlines was only about three years. T. AT.’s Condor COs (also designated the Condor 18, the B-18 or the B-20) were N185H, N725K, and N726K (manufacturer’s serial numbers G-l, G-2, and G-4, respectively).

A later version, the T-32, went into service with Ameri­can Airlines and Eastern Air Lines in 1934 as a much-publi­cized sleeper transport; but by all accounts, the passengers did not get much sleep. The low-altitude flying tended to be a little rocky, and the segments were too short. In any case, the modern airliners would soon be outlasting the obsolescent Condor design. Biplanes were becoming a thing of the past.

The NlcNary-Watres Act

The spur to the spectacular growth of air transport in the United States in the early 1930s was the result of imaginative legislation, enacted after substantial persuasion by the Post­master General, Walter F. Brown. The Third Amendment to the Air Mail Act, named after its Congressional sponsors, was approved on 29 April 1930. Its far-reaching provisions gave permanence to the contracted operators, paid them according to space offered, not by the weight of mail carried, and gave Brown powers to extend or consolidate routes to improve the system. This encouraged the airlines to invest in larger aircraft, which were more economical to operate; and gave Brown almost unlimited authority to draw the airline map as he pleased.

The "Spoils Conferences"

Things went mainly according to Brown’s plan, which was to fashion a rational system of air routes that would not suffer from the excessive fragmentation he had observed in the railroad system. No single railroad, for example, ran from coast to coast. Brown’s pressure and advice to the incumbent air mail carriers resulted in three transcontinental airlines that followed different routes, but offered opportunities for competition between the main traffic-generating areas: California and the Northeast.

But to do this, he sometimes overstepped the mark in what was perceived to be selective manipulation of the exact intentions of the Air Mail Act, and even, it was alleged, a cer­tain degree of favoritism. This led to an investigation of the circumstances of a series of meetings that he had held with the airlines between 15 May and 9 June 1930, and which became known as the Spoils Conferences.

The Air Mail Scandal

Many of the small airlines felt that they had been by-passed deliberately; and although their case was not well docu­mented and of doubtful legality, it was intensively publi­cized—so effectively, in fact, that, responding to political pressure, the Senate set up a Special Committee. Its adverse report resulted in President Roosevelt taking the unprece­dented step, on 9 February 1934, of cancelling all the air mail contracts and asking the Army Air Corps to carry the mail. This it did, with remarkable success, bearing in mind the extreme difficulties of weather and inexperience with which it was faced. But some pilots were killed, mostly in training, and this led to a national outrage that forced Roosevelt to retract his decision.

A New Life

On 30 March 1934, the Post Office Department invited the airlines to submit new bids, and these were duly accepted by the new Postmaster General, James A. Farley, on 20 April. During the two months during which the Army carried the mail, the airlines struggled on the best they could. Drastic measures had to be taken, as the revenues from passengers and express were insignificant compared with the mail pay­ments—effectively a life-sustaining subsidy. In the case of T. W.A., President Richard W. Robbins sent a letter to all the staff, which began: “Effective February 28th, 1934, the entire personnel of T.& W. A. is furloughed.”

DC-3 Replacement Posted by admin in AN AIRIINE AN0 ITS AIRCRAFT on November 2, 2015 Post-war Problems When the Second World War ended, the leading airlines rushed to put into service the new longer-ranged airliners that had been stimulated by technical advances during the war, as well as by the commercial pre-war design innovations that had been frustrated by wartime needs. T. W.A.’s Stratoliners were recalled from the military, and the C-69 Constellations and C-54 Skymasters were quickly refurbished with comfortable seating layouts. The emphasis was on the main inter-city routes; but the networks dated back to the 1930s, and with the “grandfather” route certificates in 1938, the airlines had sought, and the C. A.B. had granted, full service con­tracts to serve almost every city in the U. S.A. that was big enough to have an airport. The problem was that many of the cities—and there were dozens of these—were too small to generate enough passengers, mail, or freight to justify service by such mainliners as the Con­stellation. Other cities were able to generate the traffic, but did not have the airfields to cope with the four-engined types. Also the airlines themselves chose to deploy their best equipment on the prestige routes, which generated the highest revenues. And so the veteran Douglas DC-3, obtain­able as conversions from military C-47s, C-53s, and other DC-3 variants, and which could land or take off almost anywhere, was in great demand to back up their newer brethren in the fleet. Life in the Old Dog The old Douglas DC-3 “Gooney Bird” was the obvious choice, as there were thousands of them. T. W.A. alone had 96 altogether—a large fleet during that period. Under the C. A.B. man­date, and like the other trunk airlines, it had to serve the smaller points, or lose its certificate for the whole route. Exemptions were sometimes granted, but every’ one had to be argued sep­arately, in an often protracted series of meetings in Washington. Later, during the 1950s, the Local Service airlines were established, and these provided the answer to the problem for sev­eral decades, relieving the trunk airlines from the obligation of providing “whistle stops” on prestigious point-to-point services. But this took time, and this is why T. W.A. continued to keep the old DC-3s in service. Bill Halliday recalls that in 1947 “T. W.A. was flying so many DC-3s that as we approached Amar­illo to turn westward to Albuquerque (at night) we could see the flight ahead of us headed west and after we had completed our turn, we could look back and see the flight behind us.” DC-3 Replacement While Douglas, Lockheed, and Boeing were concerned with providing the front-line fleets, it was left to other manufacturers to come up with a formula for a modem airliner to replace the DC-3s which, even if they were not too old, were regarded by air travelers as old-fashioned and obsolescent. Postwar airliners needed, at the very least, a pressurized cabin, tricycle landing gear, on-board amenities such as ample luggage and coat space, good lavatories, and above all, faster speed. Two manufacturers came to the fore to meet this requirement: Martin, with its Model 202, and Convair, with its Model 240. At the Martin plant in Baltimore, Allan Roshkind and his team started work on the Martin 202 (at first called the Mercury) immediately after Japan surrendered. But this 36-seat design was unpressurized, and its first customer, American Airlines, changed its mind and ordered Convair-Liners instead. Nevertheless, by the end of 1945, Martin had orders for 155 aircraft and the 202 made its first flight on 22 November 1946, four months ahead of the Convair-Liner. United had ordered a pressurized version, the Model 303, but this was cancelled. This Martin 404, Skyliner Louisville, displays its registration number unusually, reading downwards on the vertical stabilizer. The Martin 202A went into service on 1 September 1950, to relieve the DC-3s on T. W.A. ’s shorter routes. It carried 36 passengers, had a З-man crew, and cruised at 220 mph. Its built-in boarding stairs, includ- ing a ventral access at the rear, accelerated boarding and disembarking at the “whistle-stops. ” This pic- ture is of Skyliner San Francisco. Boeing 747-131 Posted by admin in AN AIRIINE AN0 ITS AIRCRAFT on November 2, 2015 342-433 seats • 590 mph Engines *Pratt & Whitney JT9D-3 (43,500 lb) x 4 Length 232 feet MGT0W 734,000 lb Span 196 feet Range 4,000 miles Height 63 feet ^Initially, later JT9D-7A (46,9501b) The Boeing 747, called the “Jumbo Jet” from the time it first went into service in 1970, has already served the airlines for three decades, and will probably still be in front-line flagship service for for many more years yet. This will be as long as all the generations of airliners before 1970, at least from the debut of the first DC-3. Its reign covers half of the proverbial three-score years and ten—quite a lifetime. When they started service, the 747s cost $21 mil­lion each. Now, a Series -400 would cost about $140 million. In mixed class seating layout, it accommodates between 350 and 390 passengers; but in Japan, where a special short-haul version is used to connect the majoi centers of population, the airlines put in 530 seats, or the capacity of an average-sized London theater. Like all the trans-Atlantic jets, it makes a round-trip between Europe and the United States within 24 hours, and its productivity is thus about five times higher than that of an ocean liner such as the Queen Man. At least two of T. W.A.’s 747s were retired only after no less than 100,000 hours of flight time, a truly impressive record of aeronautical achievement. Historic Prototype Posted by admin in AN AIRIINE AN0 ITS AIRCRAFT on November 2, 2015 The World’s First Modern Airliner In 1933, the Boeing Aircraft Company had produced a twin – engined aircraft that most authorities, notably Britain’s Peter W. Brooks, considered to be the world’s first modern airliner, in that its monocoque fuselage and stressed skin wing, par­tially retractable landing gear, engines faired into the wing, together with other improvements, marked a big technical advance over the steel framework and heavy wing spar design of aircraft like the Ford Tri-Motor. The resultant superior aerodynamics gave the Boeing 247 a 60% speed improve­ment over the Ford, reducing the transcontinental flying time to about 18 hours, or less than a day.

TRANSCOnYiNENTAL a WESTERN AlR INC

General Performance Specifications Transport Plane

1Xtt* All metal trlnotored oonoplane preferred but combination structure or biplane would be considered. Mo. in internal structure mist be natal. Power» Three engines of 500 to 650 h. p. (Wasps with 1Э-1 auperohmxgerj 6*1 compression O. K.),

lao be made for oomplate instruments, _ Г~Гlying equipment, fuel oapaoity for oruiaiag range of 1000 miles at ISO a. p.h., orew of two, at leaat 12 pee – aengera with oomfortabie aaata and ample room, and the usual mieoallaneoua equipment oerried on a passenger plane of this type. Payload should be at leaat 2,300 lba. with full equip* sent and fuel for maxtixim range. Perfonamnce Top (peed tea level (minimus) 185 a. p.h. Cruising speed aea level – 79 % top apeed 148 o. p.h. plus і-єга-и ng apeed not more than 65 a. p.h. Rate of olloh aea level (mlnlnaim) 1200 ft. p. a. Barrios celling (minimus) 21000 ft. Serwioe oelling any two engines 10000 ft.

Transcontinental & Western Air ii interested in purchasing tan or eore trlaotorad tram port plena*. X ta ettaohlng our general perforaenee ipeolflcatlont, ooTorlng this equipment and would appreciate your a d ті * і ng whether your Company la interested in thla mamif soturing Job. If ao, approximately how long would It take to turn out the Гіг at plane for service teataT

Vary truly youra,

The Jock Frye Letter At the time (before the Black-McKellar Air Mail Act of 1934) aircraft manufacturers were allowed to own airlines, and Boeing Air Transport had been the foundation of United Air Lines. When Jack Frye wanted to place an order for the superior 247, he was politely told that United had booked the first 60 aircraft off the line, and that he would have to wait. Frye’s exact reaction is not recorded; but it did result in a letter which he circulated to five other manufacturers, in which he set out a specification for a tri-motor that, in effect, was ten percent better than the 247 in every respect: size, speed, airfield performance, and comfort. His wish was granted. The Douglas Aircraft Company, of Santa Monica, California, not only met all the require­ments, but did so with a twin-engined design that eliminated the shortcomings of the fuselage-mounted center engine: noise, vibration, and pilot visibility.

Jack Frye’s role in specifying the basic design of the Douglas DC-1 (by his famous letter to the manufacturers in 1933) was a landmark of inspired leadership. On 30 April 1935, he broke the transcontinental speed record by delivering the mail from Los Angeles to New York in 11 hr. 30 m.

Thia plane, fully loaded, oajst melee satisfactory telce-offs under good oontrol at any TWA airport on any combination of two angina a.

jt/os

Please oonaider thia inforamtion confidential and return ipeolfioatIona if you are not interested.

Aeneas City, Missouri. August 2nd, 1932

This is a copy of the two-page “Jack Frye Letter” that laid down the specification for the aircraft that emerged as the first of the Douglas twin-engined series, DC-1, DC-2, and DC-3. It changed the course of airline history.

This photograph, of the Douglas DC-1 at the Grand Central Air Terminal, Glendale, epitomizes the maturing air transport industry in the United States. T. W.A. ’s line of twin-engined Douglases eclipsed all others for a decade.

The Boeing 247 was the first passenger transport airplane that could be described as a modern airliner, flying some 60% faster than the Ford Tri-Motors that it replaced.

Problems with the 202

The launch customer for the Martin 202 had been Northwest Airlines, which had picked up the first-in-line privilege when Pennsylvania-Central had to withdraw because of financial stringency. The Minneapolis airline opened service by October, but was to regret the choice. It had a series of accidents, some of which were caused by a weakness in the wing structure. After the first one, on 29 August 1948, the 202 was grounded by the C. A.A.; and thereafter, in 1950 and early 1951, more accidents (not all attributed to the aircraft) resulted in the Northwest pilots refusing to fly them again.

T. W.A/s Choice

The competition between Martin and Convair was intense, as orders for hundreds of aircraft were in their sights. The performance characteristics between the two types (Martin had upgraded the first design with pressurization) were very similar. During 1949, Howard Hughes himself, together with his new president, Ralph Damon, and Bob Rummel, newly – promoted to chief engineer, conducted exhaustive tests on both the Martin 404 and the Con­vair 240. Hughes liked the Martin better, telephoned Eddie Rickenbacker of Eastern Air Lines, and ordered 100 404s. 60 were for Eastern (whose route structure was ideal for the 40- seater) and 40 for T. W.A. Hughes took one for himself. T. W.A.’s contract was signed on 22 February 1950. Pending deliveries, which would take a couple of years, Hughes leased a dozen of the earlier, 202s, modified as Martin 202A. During its service life through the 1950s, only one 404 was lost (see fleet list, page 62), and the reason could hardly be blamed on the manu­facturer. The 404s followed into service on lONovember 1951, and served T. W.A. well, in the shadow of the Constellations, for a whole decade.

Ralph Damon joined T. W.A. on 1 January 1949. A veteran airline administrator, he had been president of Curtiss-Wright in 1932, and became vice-president and later general manager and president of American Airlines for 13 years. He was ‘drafted’ in 1941 and for two years supervised production at Republic Aviation. In 1953, President Eisenhower appointed him to the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, but he did not complete the five-year term. For six years he was the ideal partner for Howard Hughes, complementing, with his managerial experience, the intuition and enterprise of his mercurial chief. During the festive season after Christmas, 1955, he attended a ceremony in Times Square, New York, in bad winter weather. This was to exhibit a huge T. W.A. Constellation replica, floodlit, and with its own lights. He caught pneumonia and died on 4 January 1956. His death was a great loss not only for T. W.A., but for the U. S. airline industry as a whole.

The Need for Non-Stops

Airline passengers as a rule wish to take their journeys with­out the inconvenience of having to stop en route. They simply wish to reach their destinations as quickly as possible. Thus, during the best years of the piston-engined era, the airliner manufacturers were able to develop their products so that the Douglas DC-7s and the Lockheed Constellation series could offer first, non-stop transcontinental range in the U. S.A. (about 2,500 miles), then non-stop trans-Atlantic (about 3,500 miles). Later improvements brought non-stop U. S. west coast to Europe, and, in the 1970s, California-Japan.

New York – Tokyo

The Boeing 747 could accomplish all these missions with ease. But Pan American Airways wanted something more: no less than New York to Tokyo non-stop, a distance of 6,754 statute miles, with a full payload. The Boeing Company obliged with a special version of its Jumbo Jet, the Special Performance variant, or the Boeing 747SP. This was achieved by providing extra tankage and more powerful engines, but mainly by shortening the fuselage to lighten the all-up weight.

Pan American opened its New York-Tokyo route on 25 April 1976; but quite surprisingly, the airline world did not rush to Seattle to join the long-range club. Even Japan Air Lines, which would have been expected to react with match­ing non-stop service, chose not to; and — perhaps wisely— waited for the expected development of the standard 747 series.

Limited Demand

The main reason, however, why the SP did not shake up the procurement patterns (and much to the satisfaction of Doug­las, which found difficulty on matching such range with its DC-10s) was because the market was inadequate to justify large fleets of extremely long-ranged airliners. Transport economists and forecasters are acutely aware of the “gravity model” or theory which, in general principle, states—quite reasonably— that the greater the population, the greater the demand. More people, more traffic. But also, the further people are apart from each other, the less they are likely to travel; and this applies to business and leisure travel alike, the influencing factors being mainly time and cost.

The Boeing 747SP was a victim of the gravity theory. Lines drawn on a world map to link big cities that were far apart from each other were found to be optimistic in terms of potential traffic demand, because of the gravity model. Aus­
tralia’s population, for example, is less than that of New York or California, so the potential traffic for non-stop routes, although measurable, was not enough to justify an airline fleet. And the traffic across the Atlantic still concentrated on the major destinations in northwest Europe, and did not need Special Performance.

Today, a quarter of a century after the Boeing 747SP opened service, the urban populations all over the world have grown considerably, to bring one element of the gravity model up to acceptance level for fleet forecasting purposes. Southern and eastern Asia, especially, contain many cities, each with more than ten million inhabitants, and with strong commercial travelling requirements. But special versions of the world’s leading airliner types are no longer needed. The basic versions can all fulfill the most demanding ranges required by all the intercontinental airlines.

Were the 747SP to be reintroduced today, the market need would no doubt generate greater sales than in the 1970s. But today’s front-line flagships can all fly ranges sufficient for all the trans-ocean city pairs. The Airbus A340, the Boeing 767, and the Boeing 777 can theoretically encircle the world at the temperate zone latitudes with only one stop.

In addition to its shortened fuselage, the 747SP had a taller vertical fin and ‘clean’ wing trailing edges, devoid of ‘canoe’flap track faring s as seen on the 747-100 (see page 83).

THE EARLY BOEING 747S COMPARED

Trans World Airlines did not join the initial rush to buy the Boeing 747SP. But on 17 October 1978, it ordered 3 aircraft for direct routes to the Middle East. They were operated for only a few years. Aside from the limitations imposed by the gravity theory, the new Boeing 767 was on its way, and the performance and potential of the new generation of this wide-bodied twin airliner usuiped the merits of the SP.