The Next Jets

oeing had upgraded the 707 in 1959 with

the new J-75 engine. The DC-8 was flying. Big jets were flying long distances and setting records, and the public was fascinated. Govern­ments the world over were buying these jets and setting up their own airlines. Flying in jets was a prestigious activity.

The government of France had been eclipsed in the jet design and production market. Its avi­ation representatives took note of something that was not in production and not even on the drawing boards—a medium-range jet that could carry 60 passengers up to 1,200 miles. This was the airplane for the European market and, presciently, was to become the airplane for the deregulated market of the future. This was the Regional Jet.

In response to a government-sponsored competition, Sud Aviation in Toulouse, France came up with a novel idea in aircraft construc­tion. They placed the aircraft’s engines on the side of the fuselage near the tail of the aircraft instead of under the wings. They called this prototype the Caravelle (see Figure 21-1), a name given small sailing ships during the age of explo­ration. Production began, and in 1956 Air France contracted for the first twelve airliners to come off the line.

FIGURE 21-1 The Caravelle was a prototype with the aircraft’s engines on the side of the fuselage near the tail of the aircraft.

Source: National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution (SI 82-14081).

British European Airways, the government – owned airline, flew many of the same routes on the Continent using turboprops. Given the proven popularity of jets, already evident in the 1950s, Britain realized that it must build its own short – haul aircraft in order to compete. Its entry was the Hawker-Siddeley Trident, which incorporated the Caravelle aft-engine innovation but added a third engine housed within the vertical stabilizer and aft fuselage. The aircraft designers placed the horizontal stabilizer at the top of the vertical stabi­lizer, out of the way of the jet exhaust, an arrange­ment that provided more stability at low airspeeds.

Meanwhile, Boeing was testing the aft – engine concept with an aft-mounted engine attached to its 707 prototype, and it was ponder­ing the viability of such an aircraft in the domes­tic market. Douglas had designed the DC-9, with its aft-mounted engines, in response to a request by United Airlines, but no other carrier expressed interest, and the design was put on hold. The airlines specified an aircraft with two or three engines, for cost effectiveness, that could operate from shorter runways like LaGuardia. Boeing’s engineers were first to conclude that a three – engine airplane with a T-tail was the most likely airplane to succeed, borrowing from the Trident design, which had proven out in Boeing’s tests. They designated the new airplane the Boeing 727 and incorporated the new Pratt & Whitney JT8D turbofan, with up to 17,500 pounds of thrust, as the power plant. Turbofans evolved from turbo­jets as early as 1960, mainly in response to com­plaints about the noise produced by straight jets, both while in taxi and airborne. The JT8D was not only quieter, but it was also more economical to operate than any other engine at the time.

The 727 was an aesthetically pleasing air­plane. (See Figure 21-2.) It was said that build­ing the 727 would have been warranted even if it could not fly. It utilized the same basic fuse­lage as the 707 and incorporated a new flap design that, at slow airspeeds, increased the wing area by 25 percent; thereby greatly reducing

the aircraft stall speed. This reduction in speed enabled the 727 to operate from shorter runways, just as specified by the airlines.

The first production model of the 727 flew late in 1962 and immediately began to surpass its design criteria. It was faster, its fuel consumption was less, and its payload was greater. Short land­ing and takeoff was proven in operation, and its superb handling made it one of the most trusted and respected aircraft flying. Concerns arising from a series of four crashes occurring in 1965 were alleviated when it was determined that they were all caused by pilot error in allowing the air­plane to descend at a rate from which recovery was difficult. These accidents established that the 727, in spite of its easy handling characteristics, had to be flown by the numbers, like most jets. The performance of the 727 would go on to earn it a reputation as the most successful commercial transport aircraft in the history of aviation. By the early 1980s, Boeing had delivered or contracted to deliver almost 2,000 of the very unique airplanes.

After Douglas had placed its DC-9 plans on hold in the late 1950s, the emergence of the short-to-medium range aircraft market caused Douglas to dust off its DC-9 blueprints. In April 1961, Douglas announced that it would begin production of the DC-9. Although Douglas had no orders placed at the time of its announce­ment, within a month Delta disclosed its con­tract to purchase 15 of the new jets. Boeing did not respond to the DC-9 until 1965, the same year the first DC-9 went into service. (See Figure 21-3.) Then Boeing unveiled its plans for the 737. The 737 was not a sleek airplane, having a width equal to the 727 and 707 but not the length—it was shorter even than the DC-9. Lufthansa Airlines was instrumental in the design of the 737 because they were first to order the airplane, insisting that it carry 100 passengers, ten more than the DC-9. The 737 entered service in 1968. (See Figure 21-4.)

Sales of the 737 were initially depressed primarily because the Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) took the position that ALPA crews

would not fly the 737 with only two flight crew members; demanding that a flight engineer be included in the cockpit. ALPA was play­ing catch-up from its earlier failure to require three-man crews in the DC-9. This requirement made the 737’s operating costs too high to be competitive, so the airlines largely rejected the airplane. ALPA abandoned its three-crew posi­tion in 1974, partly because of worldwide reces­sion based on the fuel crisis that year, and partly because of the untenable and obvious featherbed­ding aspects of its three-crew position. Airlines then started buying the 737.

For the first time, feeder airlines began to buy the short-to-medium range jets and to bring jet service to the hinterlands of America. Pied­mont, North Central Airlines, and Allegheny Air­lines were able to expand their service, and in the later years of regulation, beginning in the early 1970s, these airlines were able to secure routes to destinations previously unavailable to them. These jets made routes between small airports— like Tri-Cities, Tennessee to Chicago, or to Washington, D. C., or to New York—convenient and profitable. The feeder lines preferred one class service and gave the world a glimpse of the age of deregulation to come. But first, the jumbo jets had to fly.