Jets Across the U.S.
(See Cover)
Ever since Orville Wright took to the air in 1903, the progress of commercial aviation has been evolutionary. Planes grew bigger and faster, in predictable steps; for the past quarter-century they have increased their speed each year by 8 m.p.h. Today all that is ancient history. Evolution has become revolution with the age of the jet.
The jet will fly nearly twice as fast and nearly twice as high as the present piston planes, pack 40 times the power in its turbine engines. It will shrink the world by 40%, making no spot on earth more than a day's distance from a jet airport.
Manhattan businessmen will be able to commute to San Francisco for lunch, be back home after an afternoon's work in time for bed. Weekend flights to London and Paris will be as easy--perhaps easier --than weekend drives to the country in jam-packed Sunday traffic.
For U.S. airlines the jet age has already dawned over the Atlantic with the start of Pan American World Airways' service to Paris.* But for countless Americans, it will not arrive until American Airlines President Cyrus Rowlett Smith, 59, a tough, hardworking boss who has built his line into the nation's biggest, sends an American jet winging off on the first transcontinental jet flight, two months hence.
First to Shift. American's role in introducing the U.S. public to the jet age will be greater than any other line's. It carries 8,000,000 passengers per year, one in every six Americans who fly in the U.S., and almost twice as many revenue passengers as all overseas U.S. airlines combined. Already its Boeing 707 jetliners are whooshing back and forth across the U.S. on shakedown flights as regular as scheduled trips, cutting cross-continent flight time by more than three hours: 5 1/2 hours from New York to Los Angeles, 4 1/2 hours to return. On most of its major routes, American will start jet service months ahead of its competitors.
Of the $2.6 billion that U.S. airlines will spend by 1962 on 400 new jetliners and improved ground facilities, American will plunk down $440 million, by far the biggest sum of any airline, become the first to shift its line completely to jets. American has ordered $365 million worth of new planes to be delivered by 1962: 25 Boeing 707s for long-distance flights, 25 shorter-range Boeings, 35 Lockheed Electra turboprops for short hops, and 25 Convair 600s, which, if the plane lives up to its billing, will be the world's fastest commercial jet (635 m.p.h.).
What will the jet revolution mean to the aviation industry and the U.S. public? Items:
Bigger Airports. Forty U.S. airports are spending $260 million for jet-age buildings, new ground facilities and enlarged runways. To handle the jets, runways will have to be lengthened to at least 10,500 ft. v. 7,500 ft. for the piston-propelled DC-7.
Better Controls. The new planes will fly so high and so fast that the Government will have to set up a whole new system of air controls to prevent collisions with military jets flying at the same heights, separate the jets from slower piston planes at lower levels. In the next five years, it will spend $1.8 billion to set up all-weather, round-the-clock controls on all U.S. airways.
Bigger Planes. The Boeing 707s are 144 ft. long, 28 ft. longer than the biggest piston plane and longer than the distance of Wright's first flight. They seem more like roomy club cars than planes. Though the 707 will seat up to 150 people, American plans to seat only 112 at first, evenly divided between first class and coach.
New Sensations. The new jets fly ahead of their engine noise, are so quiet that American plans to play hi-fi music--so free of vibration that there is virtually no feeling of motion. They will fly above most bad weather (at 30,000-35,000 ft.).
New Terminals. Major U.S. airlines are putting up jet-age terminals and hangars across the country to gear their operations to the jet age. American's $75 million for new facilities will include a $14 million passenger terminal and a $12 million hangar at New York's Idlewild Airport, new hangars in several other cities. Passengers will wait for their flights in comfortable, soundproof lounges, board the jet on a single level through telescopic covered passageways that shoot out to the plane's two doors.
Faster Ticketing. American is working with IBM on an electronic system that can transmit information on every American flight across the U.S., enabling clerks to tell instantly which seats are free.
Daytime Flights. All of American's 1,000 daily flights will have to be rescheduled in the next three years. Since most people will prefer to fly in daytime and sleep in a bed at night, airlines expect overnight traffic to be cut to a trickle.
Faster Baggage Loading. All luggage for one city will be placed in large protective plastic containers that are hoisted automatically into the jet's belly, enabling workers to load--and unload--twice as much baggage in the same time. "Right now," says an American executive, "we are still loading baggage on planes the same way they loaded Cleopatra's barge."
Better Food. Jetliners will have four galleys, which can turn out 280 cups of coffee per hour, and on overseas flights infra-red ovens that can broil 130 steaks an hour. New facilities on the jet (including rolling serving trays) will make it possible for attendants to prepare and serve a meal a minute.
Lower Fares. If the jets prove as economical as their new owners hope, fares will probably be lowered to attract more travelers. In any case, a jet ride will cost no more.
Not all these changes will take place right away. The jet age has come so fast that the U.S. is unprepared for it in many ways. Long ignored by indifferent Congresses, airway control and airport modernization are lagging badly. Only 14 U.S. airports are now ready to handle jets. Complete air control is still a paper project--though enough may be done by January to keep American's transcontinental jets under radar surveillance across the U.S. But most of the changes are inevitable, simply because the jet age demands them.
Monk & Gambler. On American Airlines, the changes will come naturally and inevitably to Cyrus Rowlett Smith, known familiarly in the industry as "C. R.," who has spent 24 years patiently and indefatigably making improvements in his line.
A big (6 ft. 1 in., 192 Ibs.) gruff Texan, Smith has become a living legend in U.S. aviation. With the shrewd calculation of a gambler, the financial sagacity of a banker and the dedication of a monk, he has propelled American Airlines into first place in the industry--and in the process has done more than any other man to improve the service and standards of U.S. airlines. Says United Air Lines President W. A. Patterson: "There's no man in the industry I respect more--and you usually don't say nice things about competitors."
Smith has some of the oddest working habits of any man in top industry. His typewriter is the most important piece of equipment American owns, and Smith pecks away at it for hours on end. He writes all his own speeches, many of American's institutional ads and stockholders' reports. Though he had the same secretary for 25 years (until she retired recently), he never let her write more than a handful of letters a year.
But the chief product of Smith's typewriter is his short, sharp memos, which rarely exceed a page. They cover everything from ideas on a new plane American is considering buying to complaints about an airliner's coffee, are dispatched in a steady stream to every corner of American's operations. Wrote Smith, after noticing that souvenirs were distributed on a crack Captain's Flagship flight: "How long are you going to have them, and why have you got them at all?"
"I Liked Her." Nothing goes on along the 14,000 miles of American's routes or among its 21,000 employees that does not interest Smith. He often rides the line alone on weekends, keeping tab on everything. His seamed, jowly face has become a familiar sight to stewardesses, pilots and mechanics, as he samples the food, checks the service, asks questions--all the while jotting notes on pieces of scrap paper. A rough and tough man's man, he often peppers his speech with four-letter words, can shoot out orders like a gunslinger on the loose. Recently he saw an American Airlines sign on a road leading to Detroit's Metropolitan airport, snapped: "Who the hell put that up?" He had noticed that the hand of the stewardess in the sign was grotesquely large. It was quickly changed. I n a corporate world often dominated by slow-moving boards and committees, C. R. Smith acts with bewildering speed.
"C. R. is one of the few businessmen left in America," says Convair President Jack Naish, "with whom you can close a $100 million deal on his word alone." After Smith decided to order the Convair 600 jet, he called on Naish, chatted briefly about fishing and baseball, then suddenly blurted: "Hey, my guys tell me this 600 is a pretty good airplane." Naish agreed. Said Smith: "We want 25. How much will it be?" Naish told him $100 million. "O.K.," said C. R.--and walked out.
Smith is equally terse in social conversation. A visitor who recently had lunch with him asked what kind of work his father had done. Answered Smith: "As little as possible." Asked what sort of person his mother was, he replied: "Well, I liked her."
"We Have a Disaster." American Airlines is virtually an extension of C. R. Smith's bulky shadow, so interwoven with his adult life that the two are almost inseparable. Born in Minerva, Texas (pop. 150), the eldest of seven children, Smith quit school to go to work at nine, after his father deserted the family. He worked his way through the University of Texas, took a job with Texas Financier and Promoter A. P. Barrett, and at 30 was named vice president of Southern Air Transport, a small airline Barrett had just bought. Smith learned to fly (though he was never a good pilot), ran the airline so well that when mammoth Aviation Corp. bought it out in 1929, one of the chief assets it acquired was C. R. Smith.
In a series of mergers, American Airlines grew out of Aviation Corp., and Smith became its president. He consolidated the line's crazy-quilt routes into a sense-making network, standardized its motley collection of planes with a whole new fleet of DC-3s, launched the first extensive seat-selling campaign in aviation history. So hard pressed was Smith for money to pay for all this that he went to Fellow-Texan Jesse Jones, then head of Reconstruction Finance Corp., and told him: "We have a disaster, and we heard you were set up to handle disasters." Jones lent him $4,500,000. In 1936 American turned its first profit: a modest $4,600.
Job v. Wife. American Airlines became Smith's life and love--as pretty Dallas Debutante Elizabeth Manget discovered shortly after they were married in 1938. He never slackened his working pace--then or since--despite the fact that beginning in the 1930s he made a fortune in oil and gas that dwarfs his $80,000-a-year salary at American, could retire and live a life of leisure. Smith took off only four days for his honeymoon, on his return sent his wife to his apartment while he went to the office. When he showed up 30 hours later, he could not understand why she was angry. He had his work to do--and that was that. His wife tired of competing with an airline, divorced him after the birth of a son, Douglas, now 19, though they remained good friends. Shortly afterward, Smith went to New York when American's offices were moved from Chicago, threw parties with his brother Bill, often inviting whole casts of Broadway shows.
But Smith soon retreated from his fling at gaiety, nowadays leads a very different life--and, his friends say, a very lonely one. He lives in a six-room bachelor apartment in Manhattan, spends much of his time there reading or working, surrounded by mementos of the Old West. The rooms are paneled in pecky cypress, and most of the furniture (including Smith's bed) is of cactuswood. On the walls hangs a collection of Western paintings insured for $250,000, mostly Remingtons and Russells. Dozens of bearskins cover the floor. Smith's showpiece: an oldtime Western bar, with velvet wall coverings, brass railing, and spittoons.
For relaxation Smith likes to hunt and fish with such cronies as Cities Service Chairman W. Alton Jones and Notre Dame President Father Theodore Hesburgh, or to play poker--often for stakes of $2,000 an evening. Says Smith: "You've got to play for stakes that mean something, or you get sloppy."
Brass Backed. Smith never let himself get sloppy, was unafraid to take a gamble to put American out ahead. For example, while most other airlines were shunning New York's newly built La Guardia field in 1938 because they did not want the bother and expense of moving from Newark, Smith saw that the shift closer to Manhattan would improve service, switched American's New York base to La Guardia. New York City was so glad to get American that the gamble paid off. Smith got a rock-bottom rental, and the other airlines were eventually forced to follow, but at much higher rates. When World War II began, Smith resigned from American to become an Army Air Corps colonel. He was made second-in-command of the Air Transport Command in Washington, ended up as a major general. His old boss, Lieut. General Harold L. George, gives him the "principal credit" for success. Used to cracking out orders himself, C.R. was not awed by brass. George remembers vividly the time Smith disagreed with General Henry ("Hap") Arnold, Army Air Force chief. "C.R. turned around and said," recalled George, " 'Hap, that's a hell of a way to run a railroad.' "
Touch & Go. At war's end Smith returned to American, convinced that the great strides made during the war in air transport would bring on the air age and a huge new air-travel market. Just as he had worked with Douglas on the DC-3, he encouraged the firm to build the four-motored, long-range DC-6s, boldly ordered a fleet of 125 DC-6s and shortrange, two-engined Consolidated Vultee CV-240s. As usual, he showed himself a master at timing and bargaining. So eager was Consolidated (now Convair) for orders to relieve its postwar slump that he got the 240s for the rock-bottom price of $225,000 each; even now, American is selling them for nearly what it paid.
To pay for his new planes, C.R. pulled off a financial coup by arranging to sell $40 million in preferred stock issues and $40 million in debentures, by far the biggest airline financing till then. Since the unprecedented move came at a time when airline finances were weakening, it was touch and go whether the underwriters would not back out at the last minute. Said Smith to an associate, when he sat down to sign the deal: "Boy, if we hadn't got to work on time this morning, we wouldn't have any deal."
For a year or two, it looked as if he had speculated wrongly about the future of air travel, had dangerously overexpanded. A subsidiary, American Overseas, had started transatlantic flights and lost money with almost every planeload. Domestic air travel did not expand nearly so fast as Smith expected. In the first three postwar years, American piled up losses of $6.7 million.
But the new financing provided the money to ride out the postwar ups and downs. When the travel boom did arrive, American was in better shape than any other line to meet it. Like any good gambler, Smith decided to cut his losses on American Overseas by selling it to Pan American for $10.7 million. In 1949 American broke through the dark clouds with net earnings of more than $7,000,000. Thus encouraged, C.R. took a squint into the future and decided to expand again. He placed the first order for 25 of Douglas' big, fast DC-7s, which he got for some $700,000 less than later buyers, used them to begin the first roundtrip, nonstop flights across the continent. American has been in the black ever since '49; despite a slump in airline earnings, American held its own this year with nine-month earnings of $13,325,000, on a par with last year's nine-month earnings of $10,148,000, after allowing for a change in depreciation policy.
Whisky for Daughter. While leading the field with bold financing and new equipment, American also built up a reputation for service, based on C.R.'s deep belief that passengers must be handled with care. One Smith innovation: "Admirals' Clubs" at major airports to give 30,000 steady American customers (who joined by invitation) the chance to relax or drink while waiting for flights.
Smith, who drinks sparingly but ages his own 150-proof bourbon in special barrels for his friends, at first balked at the introduction of liquor on airlines. Later he decided to serve it--free. Says he: "It costs you more money to sell liquor than to give it away. Also, we don't want our girls to sell whisky. Would you want your daughter to be an airline hostess if she sold whisky?"
When the jet planes were ready for production, C. R. Smith decided that for once American did not have to be first, though it could not afford to be last. He held off ordering until Pan American had placed the first firm orders for the Boeing 707 and the Douglas DC-8, and United Air Lines had picked the DC-8. He shrewdly figured this would increase his bargaining power--as it did. To land American's order, Boeing agreed to enlarge the 707 fuselage, sell the planes for $500,000 less apiece than the DC-8.
Topflight Staff. No sooner had American signed its jet contracts than it began planning for the long and involved transition from props. Though Smith personally keeps tabs on every major problem, he is surrounded by topflight staffers: Among them:
P: O. M. ("Red") Mosier, 61, executive vice president in charge of operations, is a big, sugar-voiced barrel of a man, who bosses the biggest operations setup in the industry, spends 70% of American's dollar. A onetime barnstorming pilot, football coach and city manager, Mosier was hand-picked by Smith in 1938, is gearing every part of American's operation to such jet-age innovations as new fuel supplies (the jets eat up 2,000 gal. of kerosene per hour). American's 1,000 maintenance men must virtually relearn their jobs; the jet training manual alone consists of two volumes four inches thick. P: Charles A. Rheinstrom, 56, executive vice president for sales, quit American in 1946 after 18 years, went into advertising, came back this year at Smith's request to take on the job of selling jet seats to the public. In the 1930s Charlie Rheinstrom was the first to meet head on the public fear of flying, which other airlines ignored, with an unprecedented ad titled "Afraid to Fly?" P: William J. Hogan, 56, executive vice president for finance, is a wiry, greying man, who has won an industry-wide reputation for shrewdness by getting American's money on the best terms, making it stretch farther with careful planning. Smith hired him in 1947 when he was treasurer and controller of H. J. Heinz Co. P: William Littlewood, 60, vice president in charge of equipment research, is one of the world's leading aircraft engineers. He has made contributions to the development of every plane American has bought, worked for ten years with airframe makers to develop commercial jets. P: Thomas L. Boyd, 50, slender, intense vice president for flight, has been flying for more than a quarter-century. He joined American in 1934 as a pilot, became a captain two years later, rose through the flight ranks to his present position. His job is to train pilots and flight crews for the jet age, make both jets and pistons leave and arrive on schedule. He has worked on more than 2.1 million simulated jet flights, with the help of electronic machines that calculate the jet's fuel load, payload, schedule etc. as if it were on a regular run. P: Ellie Roman, honey-blonde staff supervisor in charge of American's 1,300 stewardesses, fulfilled a childhood ambition to become a stewardess, moved to New York from Chicago last year to take charge of training American's stewardesses for the jet age. Her tasks: teaching the girls to cope with the extra passengers and extra facilities (oxygen masks, self-contained air conditioning) of the new jets, give passengers "a sense of security" by explaining the jet's new aeronautical features and such unfamiliar terms as Mach, the measure of jet speed.
Money Gremlins. Thanks to the financial acumen of Smith and Hogan, American does not have to worry about one big jet-age problem: how to pay for the new jets. American financed its jet purchases three years ago on the best terms in the industry, with $135 million long-term loans from Metropolitan Life Insurance and Prudential Insurance, saved $80 million in capital outlay by leasing its jet engines instead of buying them, the first in the industry to do so. While Pan American and United have also worked out their jet financing problems, most other U.S. airlines just do not have the money to pay for the new jets. With earnings down and expenses up, they will be hard pressed to find sympathetic lenders, may have to cancel or cut back their orders.
Once airlines could have footed part of the bill through the sale of old equipment, but even here the picture is dark. Most airlines that could pay for the big, expensive Super Constellations and DC-7s that the airlines want to sell are ordering jets themselves. But C.R., getting a jump on the industry again, has found a home for some of his prop planes. Last week General Aircraft and Leasing Co., which deals in new and used aircraft, announced that it will buy 25 DC-7s from American.
Easy to Sell? How will the airlines fill the extra seats made available by the greater speed and capacity of the new planes? In the next three years, the number of seats will nearly double. Furthermore, the annual traffic increase of 15%, which alone would not fill all the seats, did not take place this year. American and the industry hope to get more people to fly more often, attract the 70% of adult Americans who have never flown. Despite the growth of the industry, the market has hardly been scratched: some 250,000 travelers account for 40% of all U.S. flying. Says C.R.: "I think jet transportation will be the easiest thing to sell that we ever sold."
To sell their extra seats, the airlines must find a way to overcome public wariness of the new jets, with their great speeds and unfamiliar features. A recent travel-market survey by the University of Michigan showed that half the people polled would not like to ride in jets, although 62% had never flown at all. Ignorance went hand in hand with coolness to the jets: more than three-quarters who disliked them either had no idea when jets would be flying in the U.S. or guessed wildly wrong. Of those who had flown before, 72% wanted to ride in a jet.
Even United Air Lines President Patterson admits: "There are quite a few people who are not going to run out and jump in a jet right away. They are going to wait and see." Nonetheless, American Airlines is already booked solid for its first two months of transcontinental jet flights, and Pan American's bookings are running double last year's.
The 707 is the most thoroughly flight-tested and debugged air transport ever to go into service, had 50,000 flying hours as a military tanker and commercial prototype before the first plane was delivered to American. The pilots are delighted with it--although their wage demands for the jet age may ground some of the airlines before the fight is over. The pilots insist that the third man in the jet cockpit be a pilot instead of an engineer (TIME, May 5), want more money ($45,000 a year for a Pan American flight captain v. $25,000 now) on grounds that the jets are harder to fly. But the jets are easier, have 100 fewer instruments than the DC-7.
Air Cocoon. The high-pitched whine of the jet engines has brought complaints from householders near airports, led some airports to impose restrictions that cut into the jets' payload. But despite all the uproar, the sound suppressors that every jet uses cut their noise level to that of a DC-7, makes the noise argument seem as dated as the early objections to the noise of the horseless carriage.
Perhaps the most serious problem for American and the other lines is the vanishing U.S. airspace. A jet moving at an average of ten miles a minute will require an air cocoon of 6,000 square miles 2,000 ft. deep for safety. Jets will reach heights formerly monopolized by military planes, will need precise traffic controls to keep them on their separate ways. Last summer Congress belatedly created a new jet-age federal agency, the Federal Aviation Agency, which will supplant the old Civil Aeronautics Administration on Jan. 1, take over safety-regulations functions from the Civil Aeronautics Board. Headed by Elwood ("Pete") Quesada, retired Air Force lieutenant general, the new agency will control both military and commercial jet movements, try to set up round-the-clock, all-weather control of U.S. aircraft. Last week Quesada announced a significant step forward: he made a deal with the U.S. Air Force to station FAA observers in the military air control stations. For the first time, the flights of military and commercial planes will be closely coordinated.
Supersonic Planes. Within a year jets will be in service in almost every part of the U.S. By 1961-62 there will be only a small number of piston-planes flying commercial U.S. flights. But U.S. airlines will hardly have phased out their piston planes--and will still be struggling to pay for their jets--when they will face another major advance in aviation.
The next step will be huge supersonic liners that can carry twice as many passengers as the jet at speeds of 1,500-2,000 m.p.h. and at altitudes of 60,000 ft. or higher. Both Lockheed and Boeing are already drawing plans for supersonic liners, could probably put one in the air in three years. But airframe manufacturers agree that the first supersonic liners will not appear for another ten years.
Says Smith: "Sure, we could build a plane to go through the sound barrier right now. But we couldn't get our money back. We couldn't charge enough for a ticket." He expects the present jets to be around for a long time.
* National Airlines plans to begin New York-Miami jet nights in December, but with only two jets, leased from Pan Am.
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