History of the Airlines and the Air Cargo Industry Part Five

The world had accepted and embraced the jet age by 1963. Within the past ten years, the post war airlines, operating piston power had perfected world air travel. Now, they had increased capacity, and cut travel times in half.

Because the jets operated by using refined kerosene, instead of high octane gasolene, the operation costs was significantly lower. This in turn, was reflected in lower ticket prices and a subsequent increase in passengers.

In the US, the increase of people traveling by air began to have an effect on domestic rail travel. The train, was also being effected by the new interstate highway system, which began construction in the mid 1950's. This taking advantage of the post war improvements in automotive technology, and interstate trucking.

The public demand for travel, plus all the "jet age" hoopla was putting pressure on the smaller cities, who had been unable to expand or build new airports. The airlines tried to compensate by bringing new airplanes on line such as the British made Vickers Viscount and the all american Lockheed Electra in which both utilized the Turbo Prop engine, and near jet speeds. The French had introduced the SUD Caravelle twin jet, in which United owned a small fleet. The French twin jet did not have the capablility to operate over short runways, although it did have reduced capacity in comparison to the big Boeing and Douglas jets. (Mc Donnell-Douglas did not exist yet!!)

The need to serve those smaller cities, and in many cases replace the Electra (due to its earlier problems,and the resulting stigma attached to it) had been predicted. Two years earlier Boeing began fabricating a new member of its
"family", the Boeing 727. Because it was concieved to fulfill the need to serve the smaller airports and markets, the 727 tri-jet was much smaller than its 707/720 sisters. It was also built to be flexible to suit many tasks, as all cargo or a mixture of cargo/passenger. The conversion from passenger to cargo would take 45 minutes.

The new Boeing 727 used the already proven 707 fuselage cross section, thus allowing compatability in production as well as seating and general interior layouts. Its ability to operate from the shorter runways was due to the use of a new wing design. This wing, when tested exceeded its design limits by 10%. To this wing, Boeing installed special leading edge "slats" and slotted "Fowler" flaps. These control features were tested and perfected on the now famous 367 "dash" 80 prototype. The 727 was powered by three rear mounted Pratt and Whitney By-Pass fanjet engines, and a distinctive "T-Tail" configuration. This design was not unique, having the British Hawker Siddelly Trident jet pre-dating the Boeing 727 by just a few months.

The combination of the powerful fan-jets and the advanced high lift devices of the wings, permitted superb performance. The 727 maintained an airspeed of 60 MPH during testing. This was by no means typical. It was also capable of flying on one, two or all three engines. To enhance its flexability even more, the 727 had rear mounted retractable airstairs, and an optional forward integral airstairs unit that would fold out. As well, the 727 featured an integral ground power unit or APU to supply electrical power, air conditioning and engine start power. This eliminated the need for ground based equipment to provide these services.

The first Boeing 727 (100 series) began service with Eastern Airlines in February 1964. Bt the end of that summer, hundreds of orders had been recieved by Boeing, from airlines throughout the world. In fact, the only US airline that did not order the Boeing 727-100 was Delta. They had committed to another new type.

The popularity of the Boeing 727, in all its versions, would give it a nickname by its cockpit crews, they would be known as "three-holers".

While this was going on, those retired Convairliner twin piston airplanes that had remained popular throughout all this time, were being converted to the Allison Prop-Jet engine, called the Convair 580, these and the later Convair 600 (Rolls Royce Dart Prop-Jet powered) would continue to serve into the 21st Century.

Douglas, had continued work on their model 2000 project, beginning in 1959, with little airline interest. By 1962 progress had continued to a point that a new fan jet powered version called the 2086 was announced, with a go ahead to produce. Utilizing the services of several US companies in addition to De Havilland Canada, the new model was progressively improved and increased in size. After choosing the same Pratt & Whitney Fan-Jets used on the 727, Douglas officially renamed the aircraft the DC-9. In May 1963, Delta placed an order for 15 aircraft.

The first model, the DC-9-10 began service with Delta in January 1965, being equal in features as the 727, but its twin engines and lighter weight, was even better suited to the short range market.

In April 1965, competition for the DC-9, and the short-haul market arrived with the British produced BAC One-Eleven twin-jet. Being comparable in size and power to the Douglas twin, the One-Eleven joined the fleets of American, Braniff and Mohawk. The DC-9 had begun service with Eastern in addition to Delta. Not to be outdone, Boeing began work on a stretched version of the hot selling 727 in 1965. This new version called the 727-200, would have the largest production number. Delta, had expressed interest in the new 727-200, to replace the Convair 880 which had become a "Gas-Hog". American would replace their 990's as well, with the new Boeing Tri-Jet. The Lockheed Electra's in the fleets of National,Northwest,Braniff and American were also replaced with the 727 series.

Eastern and United, who each had small fleets of the bigger Boeing 720 jets (incidently never upgrading these to the more powerful fan jet engines) began replacing these with 727s. United, had also disposed of the Caravelles and Viscounts. Boeing had, along with introducing the 727-200 series into production, announced another new type. The model 737, which would directly compete against the DC-9. The new twin jet would again utilize the 707 fuselage cross section, with a conventional tail stabilizer set up, and the advanced wing features of the 727 series.

The introduction of the 727, also began a transformation of the image of the airline worldwide. This was evident with several airlines performing major repaints of their airplanes. A new colorful, and positive approach was undertaken by Continental, National and several others. The most notable was Eastern who transformed the 727 into the "Whisperjet", and Braniff who began painting all their aircraft in one of nine solid colors as the "End of the plain plane". Northeast, invented the "Yellowbird". American and United made minor changes.

During 1966, The Federal Aviation Administration, who governed aircraft operations, merged with the Civil Aeronautics Board, which regulated airline operations into a single unit, which remains today as the FAA. Also, this year would begin the demise of the long distance passenger train in the US. The newly upgraded fleets of the airlines, had completely replaced the piston airliner. The new "stretched" version of the DC-9 was introduced to inaugurate the merger of Mc Donnell Aircraft and Douglas. This new DC-9-30,was part of a new family of new airplanes. This family also included three new versions of the already established DC-8. These new "eights" would include the DC-8-61 with a 36 ft stretch over the original DC-8 version, and could seat up to 250 seats. The DC-8-61 entered service with United in November 1966. The second version, the DC-8-62, had a more moderate 7 ft stretch over the "standard" or original DC-8 had range of over 5000 miles, and a new wing. The third version was the DC-8-63, which incorporated the long fuselage of the 61 with the range and wing of the 62.

A whole lot of neat stuff was happening in 1966. As Boeing was having hard time keeping up demand for 727's, they became involved in a design competition for a new large jet powered troop/cargo transport for the USAF. The design had been invisioned as an airliner as well. Although Boeing lost the design competition to the Lockheed C5A Galaxy, the remaining concept would be developed into the model 747.

The 747, was, like the earlier 707, developed without firm customer. This was not based upon the earlier safety concerns as in the past. It was the sheer size of this airplane, and its cost. With seating up to 490 passengers and/or 250,000 lbs of cargo lift, utilizing a scaled up 727 wing design, with all the great low speed characteristics,the landing gears were designed to allow the 747 access to existing runways in spite of its 750,000 lb all up weight,in addition to internal support systems. In spite of all these goodies, Boeing had to go it alone. This time the risk was much higher.

On April 13, 1966 Pan American ordered 23 passenger 747-100's and 2 727-100F Freighters, worth $525 million US. In June 1966, Boeing began contruction of a 750 acre assembly complex, which would contain the largest building in the world. By the end of 1966, orders for the new Boeing 747 had reached 1.8 Billion Dollars US.

Across the pond, the engines had been chosen for the new supersonic aircraft called "Concorde", which had been in the works since 1962. This aircraft, whos development had been closely watched, stemmed interest in ideas for both the US and (then) Soviet Union to draw up their own SSTs.

In the US, both Boeing and Lockheed had proposed an SST. The Lockheed L-2000 was to utilize a double delta wing, have 274 seats, a range of 4000 miles and a speed of Mach 2.7 (1800 MPH) and a weight of 590,000 lbs. The Boeing 2707's idea was to use the still untried variable swiing-wing, up to 350 seats, equal in speed and range to the Lockheed proposal, with an all up weight of 675,000 lbs.

Due to the astronomical development costs, both Boeing and Lockheed looked at the US Government to subsidize this effort. Between the two proposals, the Lockheed L-2000 was smaller, and with a more straightforward design, this would reflect in lower development and production costs. Whereas the larger and more complicated and, thus more expensive Boeing 2707 had the advantage of the experience of the larger airplane producer. The overall feeling was, if anybody could pull it off, Boeing could.

The Soviets had decided to develop their own SST in 1966. Being comparable in size and appearance to the Concorde, the Tupolev TU-144 would copy many of the Anglo-French designs, including the droop nose and engines based on the British made models. In 1967, US President Johnson, chose the Boeing 2707 as the winner of the design competition for the US SST program. A year later President Nixon approved the contruction of two prototypes of the Boeing SST, to be rolled out in 1969.

With the elimination of Lockheed in the SST competition, both they and McDonnell-Douglas announced the start up of their own competition between each other, to develop their own large airliners. Each company would develop a somewhat smaller airplane, compared to the 747. Each would have three engines and a high density layout. Known as "wide-bodies" the Lockheed L-1011 "Tristar" and McDonnell-Douglas DC-10 would be suited to the US Domestic Medium-Long range markets, with seating close to those found on the Boeing 747.

All these new large airplanes required new larger engines. The contenders would be Pratt and Whitney with their JT9-D for the 747, General Electric was working on the CF-6 and Rolls-Royce was developing the RB-211. At this point the DC-10 had the GE's, or the JT9D's, the L-1011 was to have the Rolls engines. The first DC-9-30 began service with Eastern Airlines in early 1967, this version of the twin jet would become the most popular type, it would be a serious competitor to Boeing against the 727. The Boeing 737 was selling, however not in the volumes, it
would see in later years.

The Soviet Tupolev TU-144, became the first SST to fly, beginning its first test flight on December 31, 1969.