Category AVIATION &ТНЕ ROLE OF GOVERNMENT

The U. S. aircraft industry took its cue from its potential customers. The industry was obviously not interested in designing and building airplanes unless and until a market existed for them. The concept of the turboprop (the turbine jet engine used to drive a propeller) was considered the likely next commercially successful form of pro­pulsion, and research and development efforts were stepped up both in military and commercial circles, particularly at Lockheed.

There was one other possibility. Boeing’s reputation as a builder of military aircraft, mainly bombers and tankers, was unequalled. But Doug­las and Lockheed were far ahead of Boeing in the commercial transport field. Boeing had taken a back seat to Douglas and Lockheed in every commercial airliner contest thus far—the B-247 ran second to the DC-3, the B-307 lost out to the Connie and to WWII, and the B-377 could not compete with the DC-7 and the Super Constel­lation. Boeing had built the C-97 piston engine tanker for the Air Force, but it was not adequate for fueling the new jet bombers, the B-47 and the B-52. The Air Force, Boeing reckoned, would be in the market for a new jet tanker.

Boeing decided to take the gamble. On April 22, 1952, Boeing’s board of direc­tors authorized the expenditure of one-fourth of the company’s total net worth, $15 million, to develop a prototype. Neither the airlines nor the military had actually expressed an interest in purchasing such an airplane, nor had any appro­priation been secured in Congress for replacing the C-97. Boeing officially designated the project the model 367-80, and it was known internally at Boeing as the “dash 80” thereafter. But the des­ignation that the world would come to know was the “707.”

Boeing had the largest and the only state – of-the-art wind tunnel for testing aircraft shapes. The development of this wind tunnel, in fact, had been responsible for the adoption of the swept-wing design first incorporated in the B-47. (See Figure 19-5.) The 707 design was adapted through wind tunnel testing for over 4,000 hours. Redundant systems, overlapping structural com­ponents, multiple strength round windows, plug

type doors for better pressurization seals, and spot welds set the standard for the jet aircraft production industry to come. The exterior shell of the 707 was engineered before the Comet disasters. Boeing decided that the skin of the aircraft would be aluminum, of a thickness that turned out to be 4’/2 times as thick as the Comet’s (the Comet’s exterior shell was so designed in order to save weight). Boeing also incorporated a new alloy, known as titanium, that was as light as aluminum but stronger than steel, to bolster the strength and fatigue resistance of the 707’s skin. Then the engineers put the design through 50,000 pressurization cycles with no evidence of metal fatigue.

Tests revealed that the positioning of the aircraft’s engines on pylons slung underneath the wings provided the best lift efficiency and had the added benefit of allowing easy access to the engines for maintenance. The wings were also designed to carry 17,000 gallons of fuel, thus allowing for nonstop transcontinental range.

In 1952, Douglas was investigating the feasibility of jet-powered airliners but only went so far as to construct a full-scale wooden mockup of what was to become the DC-8. The problem in the industry, with both manufacturers and carriers, was one of confidence. None of the industry lead­ers could seem to project a solution to the financial impact of the cost of construction of the high­flying jet airliner and its cost of operation, par­ticularly from the fuel standpoint. The J-57 was still not available. Projections of cost per aircraft approximated $4 million, contrasted to the $1.5 million price tag of the DC-7. Aviation industry leaders were not convinced that jets were commer­cially viable. C. R. Smith of American Airlines was of the opinion that in order to justify going to jetliners, the cost of operating them should be no higher than the cost of operating the DC-6. Of course, no one knew what the costs of operation of a jet fleet would be. Fuel consumption could be projected, but some costs, such as parts, mainte­nance, and engine life (time between overhaul, or TBO) would have to await experience. Among the Americans, only Juan Trippe dissented.

Trippe had been interested in the De Havilland Comet when it first came out, and had placed orders for three of the airplanes sub­ject to their specifications meeting the United States Civil Aeronautics Administration require­ments. There was, in fact, some concern that the CAA would not grant the Comet an airwor­thiness type certificate based on CAA reser­vations (prophetic, as it turned out) about the square corners of the windows in the aircraft. The CAA had recommended oval windows but De Havilland appeared to be satisfied with its design, citing design safety tolerances much in excess of expected stresses. Subsequent events would tragically vindicate the CAA’s position but, without U. S. approval, Trippe was left in the age of piston aircraft. By the time the problems with the Comet had been rectified in the rede­sign of the Comet 4, in 1958, the 707 was light years ahead of the old Comet design. The Comet, for instance, had seating for 67 while the 707’s capacity was 130.

Boeing’s gamble paid off when, in March 1955, it received its first order for the 707, not as the anticipated passenger airliner, but as the first jet tanker ordered by the Air Force. The first 707 was rolled out of its hangar at Renton, Wash­ington, in May 1955, and completed its maiden flight on July 15, 1955. The 707 prototype would undergo flight testing for the next three years before being placed in commercial airline ser­vice. The largest aircraft then in commercial service was the Boeing Stratocruiser and the 707 was 15 times more powerful, twice as fast, and almost twice as big. Douglas, now convinced of the feasibility of building civilian jet aircraft, announced that it would complete its design and begin production of the DC-8.

Pan American, alone among the American carriers, seemed interested in jets, despite their projected economic indicators. Trippe had seen how the public had abandoned piston-powered airplanes in droves for the Comet, and it was his purpose to be the first to supply the high-fly­ing, vibration-free, 500-mile-per-hour airplane of the future to America. Just as he had been among the first to abandon the wood and wire airplane and put the Fokker Trimotor all-metal cantilevered monoplane in service in 1928 (Key West to Havana), the first to inaugurate extended over-water service in the great Clipper amphibians, the first to offer his airline passen­gers hotel accommodations in his own hotels at their destinations, and among the first to switch to pressurized aircraft, he was now the first to order the first U. S.-produced commercial jet airliner. He did so against the prevailing indus­try tide in October 1955 with the announcement that he had ordered 20 Boeing 707s and, to the great delight of Douglas who did not actually have a real airplane in existence, twenty-five Douglas DC-8s. At a total capital outlay of $269 million, Pan American had committed to the largest airplane acquisition in the history of the industry.

The 707 and the DC-8 were so similar in appearance that it was hard to distinguish between them. But there were real differences to the potential customers, the airlines. First was cabin width, then length, then seating capacity, then the engines. The airlines seemed to prefer the DC-8 design. Before very long, Douglas had twice the orders for DC-8s than Boeing did for 707s. Boeing began making modifications, first to widen the fuselage to a dimension one inch wider than the DC-8, then to increase its length, wingspan, and range. Soon, it had another ver­sion of the original 707, and this time the airlines liked it. In 1955, Douglas outsold Boeing, only to be put in second place at the end of 1956. The airlines were now getting caught up in the idea of the jet age, and orders began to pour in. United States airlines bought, but so did foreign airlines. Eastern, Delta, KLM, SAS, Japan Air Lines, and Swissair all bought Douglas. American, Conti­nental, Western, TWA, Air France, Sabena, and Lufthansa went with Boeing. Boeing had finally broken the old jinx of second best. All told, Boe­ing would win the numbers competition against Douglas by almost 2 to 1. The most satisfying event, though, might have been the selection by the president of the United States of the Boeing 707 as the first jet Air Force One, in 1959.

Lockheed declined to enter the competition, concentrating on the turboprop as its best guess of where the future of commercial aviation lay. Lockheed’s contribution was to be the Electra, which in 1957 became the first propjet put in service by U. S. airlines. Only 169 planes were produced, some for the Navy, designated as the P-З. Convair submitted its 880 in 1959 but was unable to compete with the Boeing and Douglas jetliners, losing some $270 million for its efforts.

On October 26, 1958, Pan American became the first American air carrier to inaugurate sched­uled jet service with the 707 on its New York to Paris flight. National Airlines was next on December 10, 1958, with a 707 leased from Pan Am that was put on the New York-Miami run to mark the first domestic jet service. Eastern was flying the same route with Lockheed Electras, and immediately began losing out to National. American followed domestically by putting the 707 to work on the transcontinental route, then TWA. United was out of action awaiting the delivery of the first DC-8s, still in the production phase. Eastern could not seem to accept that the jet age had really arrived, and was woefully late in acquiring its first jets, much to its economic disadvantage against its competitors.

On any competitive route in the late 1950s, jets trounced the piston airplanes. The flying public loved jets, and this translated into filled passenger seats. The load factor went up dra­matically on jet routes, and their capacity was almost twice that of the DC-7. The airlines were surprised to find that the reliability of the new jet engines greatly reduced failure concerns which had become commonplace with the great turbo­compound piston engines, and that replacement parts and maintenance costs were much lower than expected. Time Between Overhaul (TBO) was a federally mandated life expectancy of the piston engine used in commercial service in the late 1950s, and it was about 800 hours. The FAA found that jet engines could greatly exceed this limit, and gradually raised the TBO for jets to

4,0 hours. This artificial limit was ultimately discarded entirely in favor of a progressive main­tenance schedule designed around the few critical components of the jet engine.

Passenger-mile costs proved to be about the same as on the DC-7. Although fuel consumption in the 707 was much higher than the DC-7, the actual passenger miles per gallon for the 707 was 42 compared to the 59 passenger miles per gallon for the DC-7. The lower cost for jet fuel (kero­sene) compared to high-octane gasoline off-set this slight difference. The economics of commer­cial jet travel were working out after all, and the flying public embraced the jet age.

The historic mission of the FAA has been to not only administer the requirements of safety in the aviation community, but also to “promote”

aviation in the overall national transportation scheme. The FAA has come under criticism from time to time that this dual role really amounts to a conflict of interest in promoting the airlines, on the one hand, and enforcing its regulations applicable to them, on the other hand. The issue resurfaced in the high visibility aftermath of the Valuejet crash in the Florida Everglades in 1996. The FAA had determined that the discount carrier was not in significant violation of the FARs, that FAA oversight and inspection of the airline had been standard, and reported its conclusion that the airline was “safe.” Within six weeks, the FAA had shut down the company based on additional findings of serious violations of regulations relating to the transportation of hazardous materials, which led to the conclusion that such violations were the direct cause of the catastrophic crash, with the loss of all lives on board.

In 1996, Congress revised the FAA’s mis­sion in the Federal Aviation Reauthorization Act, removing the “dual mandate” by repealing the duty of the administrator to “promote civil aeronautics.” Instead, Congress directed the FAA to consider as its highest priority the “maintain­ing and enhancing of safety and security of air commerce.”

Chapter 8 Glenn Curtiss

Chapter 9 World War I, NACA,

and the End of the Wright Patent Litigation

Chapter 10 Airmail Story

Chapter 11 Horsepower

lenn Curtiss’ efforts were to overlap the Wrights’ and, as has been said, he was to take off where they left off. He began as a young man excelling in bicycle racing in 1896, becoming champion for western New York State. In 1900 he started his own bicycle shop in Hammonds – port, N. Y., where he built a version he called the Hercules. He took to installing on these bikes a 1-cylinder gasoline engine kit, which he bought and assembled. Due to its poor construction, he began to modify this engine and before long he had designed and produced a motorbike with his own 2-cylinder air-cooled engine design that was handily defeating all competing models. In 1902 he formed the G. H. Curtiss Manufacturing Com­pany, where he produced the Hercules motor­cycle, a favorite all over the United States due to the excellence of its engine (see Figure 8-1). He set an unofficial speed record of 64 miles per hour in 1903 at Yonkers, N. Y. with the Hercules and a world official speed record of 136.27 miles per hour at Ormond Beach, FL four years later atop his V8, 268-cubic inch, 40-horsepower model.

elivery of mail was a feature of colonial America, although a haphazard and irregu­lar practice, and was mainly a function of private enterprise. Mail was often left and picked up at taverns and inns. Benjamin Franklin served as Philadelphia’s postmaster beginning in 1737, and was appointed the deputy postmaster general for the American colonies in 1753. He brought order to the system by mapping routes between sta­tions, establishing post roads and mileposts, and inaugurated the use of stagecoaches to deliver mail under contract. He was appointed postmas­ter general by the Continental Congress in 1775 and the practices he had put in place continued.

The Constitution of the United States spe­cifically authorizes Congress to establish post offices and post roads. When California was admitted to the Union in 1850 and the discov­ery of gold (a main source of wealth for the United States at the time) made rapid commu­nication essential between the seat of govern­ment and commercial centers in the east and the new, developing west coast, the government con­tracted with the privately owned “Pony Express” to deliver the mail. The Pony Express short­ened mail delivery over the 2,000-mile route to about 10 days. Expedited communication has, from time immemorial, been a highly valued
quality of civilization and a legitimate, necessary governmental function.

Congressional legislation in the 19th century made railroads officially “post roads.” The Post Office Department contracted with the railroads to deliver intercity and transcontinental mail, which was the mainstay of national mail deliv­ery until well into the 20th century. In the late 19th century, passenger trains included “postal cars,” where mail was sorted en route by postal employees.

The government “airmail” experiment that was begun in 1918 was a government operation because there was no reliable private sector to perform that mission. Contrary to the practice in other countries, passenger and cargo transporta­tion has not been a government function in the United States. Even when the railroads were nationalized between 1917 and 1920 due to the requirements of transportation control in World War I, they were returned to private operation as soon as practicable. Although the government dalliance with airmail delivery was a successful experiment to advance a legitimate government function, it also hastened the building of an avia­tion infrastructure of lighted airways and landing fields that could inure to the benefit of a private aviation transportation system. As late as 1925,

however, it was hard to find much evidence of an emerging privately operated transportation system.

From the Wright’s first flight in 1903 to the middle of the 1920s, there had been only two known attempts to start a scheduled passenger flying service, or airline, in the United States. The first was the St. Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line inaugurated on January 1, 1914 to serve the

18- mile over water route between the two Florida cities with a 26-foot Benoist XIV flying boat. (See Figures 12-1 and 12-2.) Although the little air service carried 1,200 passengers over the twenty – three minute route during the next several months, at a fare of $5.00 each, business sagged with the departure of the northern tourists and their money in the spring, and the company folded.

The other one was a short-lived idea of a Manhattan Cadillac dealer by the name of Inglis M. Uppercu. Uppercu ran an aerial sightseeing service in New York that he had started as an offshoot of having manufactured seaplanes (see Figure 12-3, Aeromarine Corp) for the Navy during World War I. In 1920, he bought out a small Key West to Havana mail line and began to supplement the cargo with passengers. Prohibi­tion (which outlawed the manufacture and sale of alcoholic beverages) went into effect in the

United States beginning in 1920 as a result of the 18th Amendment, and Uppercu correctly figured that Cuba and the Bahamas, with their plentiful rum and sunshine, would make a fetching desti­nation for thirsty and cold Americans.

He formed Aeromarine West Indies Air­ways and during his first year carried 6,814 passengers in seven flying boats, flying 95,000 miles. He noted that people who seemed to be terrified of flying at altitude over land appeared to have no fear of flying a few feet above water in a flying boat. The airline published sched­ules and met them. During its second year, the fleet was expanded to 15 aircraft, which car­ried 9,107 passengers on 2,000 flights. After two widely publicized accidents, resulting in the deaths of several passengers, and receiv­ing exceedingly bad press that emphasized the complete absence of any kind of government mandated safeguards for the flying public, the bloom was off the rose. Uppercu shut down his airline in 1923.

Henry Ford, who by the middle of the 1920s was quite successful as the manufacturer of auto­mobiles, saw that he had a legitimate busi­ness use for airplanes in the middle 1920s. Ford Motor Company had automobile plants in various locales, including Detroit, Cleveland,

Chicago, and Dearborn, and it was necessary to carry parts and machinery between them on a regular basis. Ford became acquainted with William E. Stout, an idea-man and former air­plane designer, who had a passion to build an all-metal airplane. The craft would be built of duralumin, not quite as light as aluminum but twice as strong. Ford decided to back Stout who did, in fact, produce a single engine high wing monoplane constructed almost completely of metal, all as advertised. Its corrugated metal sides and thick wings looked remarkably like those produced in Germany by the Junkers Company,

but no one said anything. It was powered by the Liberty water-cooled engine, carried eight pas­sengers and was dubbed Maiden Detroit.

Ford not only bought the plane, he bought the plant as well. He started Ford Air Transport and began a regular service between his plants. He then set Stout on a course to develop a bigger all metal airplane, one that would go down in his­tory as the Ford Trimotor.

In 1924, Stout’s efforts resulted in the tri­motor Ford 3-AT, a bulbous-nosed monstros­ity configured with the pilot seated in an open cockpit above the high-winged fuselage. The
design was so horrendous that Ford retired Stout and turned the design function over to his team of engineers, which included William McDonnell. McDonnell’s name was destined to lead the merged McDonnell Douglas Corpo­ration in 1967.

The story goes that progress on convert­ing the mongrel 3-AT to a more aesthetically pleasing and efficient design was slow, until one day in 1926 when a Fokker F-7 Trimotor monoplane showed up in Dearborn, under the command of Admiral Richard E. Byrd. The airplane was gratuitously hangared for the night at Ford’s field, and it is said that Ford’s design team with tape measure in hand did not get much sleep that night. In due course, the Ford 4-AT Trimotor emerged from the Ford team’s plans and sketches, bearing a striking likeness to the Fokker F-7. The Ford Trimotor, affec­tionately dubbed the “Tin Goose,” sported the same heavy cantilevered wing without wire bracing as did the F-7, and its dimensions and engine mountings were similar. The airplane conveyed a sense of sturdiness and stability to the 14 passengers it could carry at 100 miles per hour over a distance of 250 miles. Refinements in this basic design were continued into the 1930s, with 199 Trimotors ultimately produced.

In spite of the individual efforts of a number of adventurers and various businessmen, in 1925 there was no momentum to be found in the world of commercial aviation. Progress was measured in fits and starts, like the two defunct airlines mentioned above, and popular confidence was justifiably lacking due to the unreliability of the engines and aircraft of the time. Passenger air traffic was basically unknown. We saw in Chapter 11 how things were about to change for the better in the quality and reliability of aircraft engines, and progress was also being made in airframe design and construction, yet aviation wandered aimlessly over the countryside. That is, except for the airmail. What the private sector needed was a reason to fly.

United Airlines’ name came through the Black and Brown affair unscathed. This was because each of the airmail carrying lines operated in their own names, for example, Boeing Air Trans­port, Pacific Air Transport, and United Air Fines Transport Corporation. The chief oper­ating officers of the companies caught up in the Brown affair were banished. Thus, United’s Phil Johnson left the stage and the presidency of United Airlines was assumed by Pat Patterson, a 34-year-old former banker who came up through the ranks from Pacific Air Transport.

Patterson is credited with initiating the in­flight passenger service staffed by young women, initially nurses, in 1930. The United group was the strongest of the airlines of the 1930s. It was United’s lead that counted with the other airlines when Patterson decided to continue passenger and freight service in spite of the cancellation of the airmail contracts in 1934, as he said, “no matter what the losses.” United maintained its schedules but at tremendous cost. Even with the return of airmail contracts, given the reduced rate then paid and the losses suffered during the cancellation period, United lost more than two million dollars in 1934, and continued to struggle financially over the last years of the 1930s, fall­ing behind American Airlines with revenues less than half of American by 1938.

The United group, in their individual oper­ating names (Pacific Air Transport, Boeing Air Transport, etc.) had been the lone airline group to sue the government over the airmail cancella­tion decision in 1934. That litigation would drag on and not be finally resolved until 1942, when the decision of the U. S. Court of Claims was handed down.2 The court upheld the right of the government to cancel the contracts, but awarded damages to United for those sums representing United’s airmail carriage up to the date of cancel­lation. The language of the opinion is generally considered to be favorable to United and not in keeping with the tone of the Black investigation and the negative airline press it generated.

It can be argued that United’s difficulties beginning in 1934 were due to an unfriendly relationship between the Roosevelt Administra­tion (which would remain in office until 1945) and United due to the litigation, and exacerbated by a general anti-corporate attitude in certain government quarters. For example, the Inter­state Commerce Commission (ICC) had assumed responsibility for rates and mergers as a result of Black-McKellar. In 1936, the ICC refused to approve a merger between United and a money­making line serving New York-Washington. When the Civil Aeronautics Authority took over the ICC function in 1938, it denied pur­chase authority for United’s bid for Western Air Express (the split-off branch that did not merge with TAT to form TWA). United, with its 10-passenger Boeing Model 247s, was struggling to compete against the larger and faster DC-2s and DC-3s of the other lines.

In 1937, United still had its transcontinental route, but that was in heavy competition with the other routes awarded by Brown. It did not have the strength of the eastern lines that resulted from their consolidation of the shorter route struc­ture between cities of the more populous eastern United States. Not until the 1960s would United be once again the airline industry leader.

esponsibility for aviation safety had been lodged in the Civil Aeronautics Authority (CAA) by virtue of the Civil Aeronautics Act of 1938, as amended in 1940. Over the course of the ensuing 20 years, aviation safety had dramatically improved, largely due to the reliability of aircraft and engines and the development of instruments and navigation aids. The skies were much more crowded in 1958 than they had been in 1938, no doubt; but progress had been made in refining the airway (navigation) structure since the days of the lighted (beacon) airways. Beginning in 1947, VHF Omni-directional Radio transmitters (VOR) were installed across the country. An aircraft with a VOR receiver could track inbound from any point, directly to the station, by means of visual refer­ence to the display shown in the onboard aircraft receiver. The direct routes between the VOR trans­mitters were established in 1950, designated as Victor airways, and were given numbers to distin­guish one from another. Instead of flying from city to city as previously, or from one low-frequency radio transmitter to another (the radio range navi­gation system), aircraft that were equipped with these high-frequency radio receivers flew these new routes as aerial highways.

For years the CAA had been authorized to fashion rules and regulations to promote aviation

safety and to thus establish standards for aircraft, engines, propellers, and mechanics, as well as for flight schools and the training of airmen. It was also charged with developing and administering the Air Traffic Control system (АТС), the system oper­ated by the federal government that regulated the movement of aircraft throughout the United States. Control of aircraft by АТС could range all the way from taxi to takeoff, departure and en route clear­ance, to arrival and landing clearance at destination. Most aircraft in the 1950s flew under Visual Flight Rules (VFR), which required little or no АТС control. Airline passenger operations, however, flew largely under Instrument Flight Rules (IFR), the procedure that was designed to ensure that an aircraft had airspace reserved specifically for it, so that no other airplane flying under IFR would occupy that same airspace. But it was not uncom­mon for airline traffic to also fly under visual flight rules, at least for part of the planned route of flight.

These regulations were known as Civil Aero­nautic Regulations (CARS) and were published in the Code of Federal Regulations. The CAA appears to have dutifully performed its administrative func­tion regarding such matters. It can be argued with the aid of hindsight, however, that there was a lack of long-range vision within the CAA during its first 20 years of existence, between 1938 and 1958.

For one thing, the CAA was buried within the Department of Commerce along with the agencies that dealt with highways, maritime issues, textiles, the census, and myriad other matters. To make things worse, its appropriations had been slashed following World War II. Voice communication between pilots and ground controllers using high frequency radio had only been completely imple­mented in 1955. CAA air traffic control centers, which exercised control over all IFR traffic within large geographical areas throughout the country, now had direct voice contact with most aircraft within their sectors, although in some remote areas of the country it was still necessary for aircraft to relay and receive communications with АТС through airline company channels, particularly in uncontrolled airspace. CAA controllers kept track of the location of each aircraft in the sector by means of position reports given by the pilots themselves. These position reports included time, altitude, last radio fix or location, next radio fix, and the estimated time of arrival at that fix. Posi­tion reporting was cumbersome and that system required extremely large blocks of airspace to be reserved for a single aircraft.

Radar, only recently invented (WWII), was slower to be adopted. Radar was first implemented by АТС only as an aid to making instrument approaches to airports during instrument or bad weather conditions. Gradually, as the number of large planes increased and began competing for the available airspace, it became more and more dif­ficult for the air traffic control center personnel to keep track of aircraft. Distance Measuring Equip­ment (DME), the system that allowed an airplane to determine its distance from an equipped navigation facility, was incorporated into the VOR (Victor) airways system beginning in 1951. Now an air­craft could not only determine its azimuth location (bearing) from the station, it also could determine its distance. DME was a big help in tracking air­craft in the “voice only” system but, even so, the control problem was becoming unmanageable.

In 1955 there were surveillance radars in place at 32 locations to service traffic arrival and depar­ture at airports, but there were no long-range radars to control en route traffic except in the mid-Atlantic region at Baltimore. Concerns were raised that АТС traffic congestion increased the likelihood of mid-air collision. Extension of long-range radars to provide positive radar control for en route traffic was discussed, but not implemented. Then, on June 30, 1956, a United Airlines DC-7 collided with a TWA Super Constellation over the Grand Canyon, in Arizona, killing 128 people. (See Figure 20-1.)

In order to take a closer look at this tragedy, some background regarding how АТС did things at the time is helpful. Commercial airline flights at the time were conducted under both IFR and VFR rules, at different times during the same flight. АТС provided aircraft separation only to aircraft flying under instrument flight rules, and then only to aircraft flying within “controlled” airspace. It is also important to note that the air­craft separation provided was only as to other IFR traffic, not aircraft flying under visual flight rules.

En route controlled airspace (as opposed to terminal airspace) was basically limited to Victor airways that crisscrossed the country. A disadvantage to the Victor airways system was that its zigzag courses often did not suit either favorable wind conditions or preferred airline routing. Airline operations were thus permitted on “direct” routes between points, but these operations were “off airways,” or in uncontrolled airspace, in which АТС did not provide either control or aircraft separation, even on IFR flight plans. Operations in uncontrolled airspace were therefore conducted under visual flight rules where flight crews were obligated to “see and avoid” all other aircraft traffic.

TWA 2 and United 718 both departed Los Angeles on IFR flight plans within minutes of each other. TWA 2 was assigned an altitude of 19,000 feet and United 718 was cleared to 21,000 feet. While still in controlled airspace at 19,000 feet, TWA 2 requested and was granted clearance to “1,000 on top,” which allowed it to climb to and maintain any altitude at least 1,000 feet above the general cloud layer. TWA 2 then climbed to 21,000 feet.

As the two flights neared the Grand Canyon, both aircraft were at 21,000 feet on converging courses. They were in uncontrolled airspace, in clear weather with only scattered buildups that could be circumnavigated. Both aircraft were

• Phoenix

FIGURE 20-1 Collision of United Airlines DC-7 and TWA Super Constellation, June 30, 1956.

flying under visual flight rules that required each to “see and avoid” each other, but somehow they did neither. While no definitive causation could be established, the crash investigation panel sug­gested that the towering cumulous might have obscured the aircraft from each other.

This accident caused the largest loss of life since the beginning of commercial aviation. It focused public attention on the increasingly crowded skies developing over America as com­mercial aviation grew. The addition of jets to the aircraft fleet, flying at almost twice the speed of the fastest piston aircraft, would only increase the hazard. Another problem was the mix of military aircraft with civilian aircraft in common airspace. Bomber and fighter jet aircraft operated under one set of rules run by the military, and civilian aircraft operated under a different set of rules administered by the CAA.

The civilian-military dichotomy of aircraft control soon produced a second midair catastrophe. On January 31, 1957, a Douglas Aircraft owned DC-7 and an Air Force F-89 collided near Sunland, California at 25,000 feet. The DC-7 had a crew of four who were onboard in connection with a test flight of the aircraft, with no passengers. The F-89 Scorpion, with a crew of two, was conducting an unrelated test flight. Near head-on closure at high
speed was deemed the probable cause. A par­ticularly regrettable and high profile aspect of this midair collision was the fact that aircraft debris fell onto the occupied school yard of Pacoima Junior High School, where hundreds of students happened to be engaged in athletic activities. Three boys were killed and some 71 children were injured.

The lack of uniformity and coordination in aircraft control between civilian and military authority was further highlighted by the midair collision of a United DC-7 with a U. S. Air Force F-100 on April 21, 1958 very near the Grand Can­yon. The F-100 was based at Nellis AFB and the DC-7 was en route from Los Angeles to New York at 21,000 feet when the collision occurred. Neither aircraft was aware of the presence of the other, and neither were their respective controlling authorities. On May 2, 1958, yet another midair occurred when a military jet trainer and a civilian airliner collided over Brunswick, Maryland. This time the death toll was 12. It was clear that something had to be done.

Although it had been apparent to many people in authority since the early 1950s that technological advances in aviation and the growth of commercial aviation had compromised the government’s func­tion to properly promote safety in commercial air travel, no consensus for remedial action formed until this series of midair collisions occurred. The
first action taken was the formation of the Air­ways Modernization Board (AMB) in 1957, which was really no more than a temporary fix to try to address the problem. The AMB had been created as a result of a Presidential report that warned of “a crisis in the making” as a result of the inability of the airspace management system to cope with the complex patterns of civil and military traffic ply­ing America’s skies. Seemingly fulfilling this dire prediction, the midair collision in 1958 occurred. Another temporary fix followed to combine rule making authority for control of all aircraft, military as well as civil, in the CAB in 1958.

The day after the Brunswick midair, the Federal Aviation Act draft legislation was intro­duced into both the Flouse and Senate chambers of Congress. The primary mover of the Act was Sena­tor Mike Monroney of Oklahoma, a frequent critic of existing aviation policy. President Eisenhower sent a special message to Congress soon after in which he referenced the “recent midair collision” and the “tragic losses of life,” and through which he asked for the establishment of a federal agency to consolidate the functions required to administer the needs of both civil and military aviation in the country. Congress finally acted.

The Federal Aviation Act of 1958 was signed into law by President Eisenhower on August 23, 1958. While the Act incorporated virtually all of the provisions of the Civil Aero­nautics Act of 1938 that related to economic reg­ulation (entry, rates, routes, mergers, interlocking directorates, and agreements among air carriers), its great impact was on safety. The CAA was abolished and in its place was created the Fed­eral Aviation Agency, which was organized as an independent agency answerable to Congress.

The Federal Aviation Agency was given authority to make long-range plans and to imple­ment such plans without interference from compet­ing government interests. All air safety research and development was consolidated and placed with the new agency; thus, the work of the Airways Mod­ernization Board, the Air Coordinating Committee, and the National Advisory Committee for Aeronau­tics (NACA) was assumed by the Federal Aviation Agency. Recall that an example of the work of

NACA includes the engine cowl research originally incorporated on the Boeing 247 and DC-1 back in the 1930s. Rule making was taken away from the CAB and placed in the new agency, as was the responsibility for recommendation regarding aviation legislation. This new rule-making authority included consolidation and unification of authority for rule making for control of all aircraft, both civil­ian and military, flying in United States airspace.

Jurisdiction over suspension or revocation of airmen certificates was removed from the CAB and placed in the Federal Aviation Agency; the CAB was then designated as an appeal board to review the Administrator’s certificate action with authority to reverse or modify the action taken by the agency against an airman. The CAB retained its responsi­bility for aircraft accident investigation as well as all aspects of economic regulation of the airlines.

In the fall of 1958, the first Federal Avia­tion Agency Administrator to be appointed was retired Air Force General Elwood R. “Pete” Quesada. (See Figure 20-2.) He stepped up enforcement procedures in the airlines, assessing fines and issuing suspensions for rules violations. He led the way for the adoption of military-style radar for control of civilian aircraft. His tenure with the Federal Aviation Agency was marked by stormy relations with the airlines and its pilots, as well as with general aviation, but it set the country on a course of placing safety first for the flying public, a priority constant to this day.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) was created by the Department of Transportation Act of 1966 as an agency within DOT. The general responsibilities given to NTSB were to investigate transportation acci­dents, to determine the “probable cause” of the accident, and to make recommendations based on its findings designed to assist in preventing similar accidents in the future (see page 205 for list of primary responsibilities). The range of transportation modes subject to the scrutiny of the NTSB was commensurate with the DOT itself, that is, railroad, highway, aviation, marine, and pipeline. It was assigned the addi­tional role of acting as a review board for air­man appeals from certificate actions or penalty assessments by the FAA.

In 1974, the NTSB was removed from the DOT and established as an independent agency answerable to Congress pursuant to the pro­visions of the Independent Safety Board Act. This action was taken by Congress because it was determined that, given its unique role in investigation and recommendation, the agency should be completely independent of other agen­cies and departments to ensure that it could be direct, impartial, and uninfluenced in making assessments of fault and recommendations for changes.

The agency is headquartered in Washing­ton, D. C., and maintains 10 field offices nation­wide and a training center in Ashburn, Virginia, in suburban Washington, D. C. In recent years, the agency has shrunk in size. In 2003, NTSB had 438 full-time employees compared with 386 in September 2006. During the same period, the number of full-time investigators and tech­nical staff decreased from 234 to 203. (See Figure 22-2,) NTSB’s modal offices vary in size in relation to the number of investigators; as of September 2006, the aviation office had 102 investigators and technical staff; the rail, pipe­line, and hazardous materials office had 31; the highway office had 22; and the marine office had 12 employees. An additional 36 technical staff worked in the Office of Research and Engi­neering, which provides technical, laboratory, analytical, and engineering support for the modal investigation offices. For example, it is respon­sible for interpreting data recorders, creating acci­dent computer simulations, and publishing general safety studies.

The investigative role now performed by the NTSB dates back to the Air Commerce Act

of 1926 when Congress gave the Department of Commerce responsibility for investigation of air crashes. An Aeronautics Branch of the Com­merce Department was created to carry out this responsibility and it did so until renamed the Bureau of Air Commerce in 1934. In 1938, the CAB took over the investigative role and per­formed this duty until the creation of the NTSB in 1966.

To facilitate its investigative and reporting responsibility, Part 830 of the FARs requires aircraft operators to provide notification to the NTSB of certain accidents and incidents, and in certain cases to follow up such notice by required reports. This notification and reporting regimen is important to the role of the NTSB in staying current with problem areas in aviation safety.

The role of the NTSB was extended to the investigation of nonmilitary public aircraft acci­dents under the provisions of the Independent

FIGURE 22-3 Number of accident investigations completed by NTSB by mode, fiscal years 2002-2005.

Source: GAO analysis of NTSB data.

Safety Board Act of 1994. Public aircraft, gen­erally those aircraft owned or operated by vari­ous federal government agencies, were excluded from compliance with the airworthiness and maintenance requirements of the FARs by the

Key laws, regulations,

and policies Investigation policy

Aviation 49 U. S.C, 1131 (a)(1)(A)

49 C. F.R. part 800

International Civil Aviation Organization annex 13

49 U. S.C. 1131(a)(1)(E); 1131(b)

49 C. F.R. part 850

U. S. Coast Guard/NTSB memorandum of under­standing from 9/12/2002

49 U. S.C. 1116(b)(5)

Investigates or causes to be investigated all civil and certain public aircraft accidents in the United States and participates in the investigation of international accidents where the United States is the state of registry, operator, designer, or manufacturer. Investigates selected accidents including railroad grade crossing accidents, which NTSB selects in cooperation with a state.

Investigates selected major accidents and incidents, collisions involving public vessels with any nonpublic vessel, accidents involving significant safety issues related to Coast Guard safety functions, and interna­tional accidents within the territorial seas and where the United States is the state of registry. Major marine accidents are defined as a casualty that results in (1) the loss of six or more lives; (2) the loss of a mechani­cally propelled vessel of 100 or more gross tons; (3) property damage initially estimated as $500,000 or more; or (4) serious threat, as determined by the Commandant of the Coast Guard and concurred with by the Chairman of NTSB, to life, property, or the envi­ronment by hazardous materials.

Investigates railroad accidents involving a fatality, substantial property damage, or a passenger train.

Investigates pipeline accidents in which there is a fatality, substantial property damage, or significant injury to the environment.

Investigates releases of hazardous materials in any mode that involves a fatality, substantial property damage, or significant injury to the environment. For all modes, NTSB also evaluates the adequacy of safeguards and procedures for the transportation of hazardous materials and the performance of other departments, agencies, and instrumentalities of the government responsible for the safe transportation of that material.

Investigates selected accidents that are cata­strophic or of a recurring nature.

FIGURE 22-4 Key laws, regulations, and NTSB policies for investigations by mode.

Source: GAO summary of law, regulations, and policies.

Federal Aviation Act of 1958. In 1993, the Gov­ernor of South Dakota, George S. Mickelson, was killed in the crash of a government aircraft in which he was a passenger. In the wake of the investigation into that accident, Congress rewrote the law to bring most nonmilitary government – owned or operated aircraft within the authority of the FAA and the NTSB.

In 1996, Congress further charged the NTSB, pursuant to the provisions of the Aviation Disaster Family Assistance Act, with the task of coordinating all federal assistance to survivors and families of victims of catastrophic transpor­tation accidents. The NTSB strategic plan devel­oped as a result of this mandate ensures that such people receive timely assistance from the carrier involved, and from all government agencies and community service organizations included in the program.

The primary functions of the NTSB are out­lined in the box shown on this page.

It should be noted that the NTSB has no authority over any other federal agency or any industry group. It has no regulatory or enforce­ment powers. Its effectiveness is enhanced by its resultant impartiality. The NTSB operates with a very small staff, historically fewer than 400 employees. Since 1967, the NTSB has investi­gated over 114,000 aviation accidents and issued more than 11,600 safety recommendations in all transportation modes. More than 80 percent of its safety recommendations have been adopted by those empowered to effect changes in the transportation system and in government agen­cies. At a cost of less than $.24 annually per citizen, it is said to be one of the best bargains in government.

Endnotes

1. In 2001, responsibility for aviation security was transferred from the FAA to the Transportation Security Administration (TSA).

2. See FAA Order 8020.11c and preceding orders that pro­vide direction and guidance to inspectors performing acci­dent investigations.