The Magic Word

In the transcontinental airline business, a magic, dollar-bearing word has cropped up in the last few months. The word: nonstop. Roaring eastward with a howling tail wind last week, a new Douglas DC-7 belonging to American Airlines hit top speeds of 480 m.p.h., made it from Los Angeles to New York in a single 6-hr.-10-min. jump, for a new commercial speed record. While American was hanging up its record, United Air Lines impatiently took delivery of its first DC-7 so that it, too, could get into the transcontinental race. At stake is the coast-to-coast luxury trade, and the competition gets hotter with every flight.

What touched it off was the DC-7 that American introduced last November --the first plane scheduled to fly both ways nonstop from Los Angeles to New York. American's advertised schedules of 7 hrs. 15 min. nonstop from Los Angeles, and 8 hrs. 40 min. one-stop from San Francisco, were anywhere from 40 min. to 2 hrs. 45 min. faster than competing airlines. Result: large chunks of United's and T.W.A.'s blue-ribbon business have flown off in American's 20 DC-75.

Champagne, Anyone? To win back their lost business, both United and T.W.A. are spending a total of $103 million on their own superplanes, many of which will be used on East-West runs. By June, United will have the first of its 25 DC-75 in service, plans to take the edge off American's one-stop San Francisco service by making it in a single jump, thus saving 70 minutes. United's ships will have forward and after compartments, and a special baggage room up front so passengers can get at their luggage in flight.

T.W.A. will stick to its faithful Lockheed Super Constellations, but is shelling out an extra $10 million to make its 20 new ships palaces in the sky. T.W.A. passengers already get free champagne with their dinners, and can have full-length berths on nighttime flights. Last week T.W.A. cut the berth charge from $90 to $25.

Connie on the Dot. The airlines are keeping a close watch on competitors' performance. T.W.A., which already has one nonstop eastbound run in its Constellations, sniffs that American's schedules are just paper performance. Eastbound, says T.W.A., the new planes are late 40% of the time. Westbound, the DC-7s do even worse, take up to twelve hours, because of headwinds. Temporarily, American has been getting exemptions from the CAA rule against flight crews staying on the job for longer than eight hours at a stretch. But last week CAA itself was checking arrival times to see if the schedules are realistic.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.