Room for All

Last September, Seattle's Boeing Co., having spent $16 million to design a giant jet military transport, lost the $2 billion Pentagon contract to the Lockheed Aircraft Corp. and its C-5A. Despite the staggering blow, Boeing's President William Allen managed to sound philosophical. "When you lose," he said, "you look for other opportunities."

Allen did not have to look far. Already in the market for a jumbo passenger jet was an old friend with whom Boeing had clone a lot of mutually profitable business in the past. Pan American Chairman Juan Trippe has been buying Boeing products for years, from the old Yankee Clipper to the immensely successful 707 and 727. Now, Boeing simply redesigned its rejected military transport jet to meet Trippe's commercial needs. Last week Trippe signed a $525 million contract--biggest single order in the history of commercial aviation--to buy 25 of Boeing's new 747s.

Five-Story Tail. Of these, 23 will be passenger planes, each capable of carrying up to 490 customers in seats nine or ten abreast split by two aisles; in addition, there will be eight private compartments in a raised section in the forward part of the plane. The remaining two planes ordered by Pan Am will be freighters, with capacities of 214,000 lbs. as against the 76,400-lb. limit of the airline's current Boeing-made cargo aircraft. Scheduled for delivery starting in September 1969, the 747 will cruise at 45,000 ft. at some 625 m.p.h., and will have a range of nearly 6,000 miles, or roughly the distance between New York and Baghdad. Its tail section will stand more than five stories high, its Pratt & Whitney-made jet engines will be so powerful that the aircraft will actually need less runway space for takeoffs than the 707.

Boeing's main rival, Lockheed, still hopes to turn out a commercial version of its C-5A that might carry upwards of 900 passengers. It could be ready in 1970, one year after Boeing begins its deliveries. But Lockheed's facilities are presently committed to fulfilling the Pentagon order for the military transport jet. Douglas Aircraft has designed a DC-10 that is roughly the equivalent of Boeing's 747. Now that Pan Am has ordered its jumbo jet, competitive U.S. airlines such as TWA and United have little choice but to follow suit, and it is possible that Douglas or Lockheed will land a contract from some of them. No matter what happens to Douglas and its DC-10, it has already taken orders for 72 of its stretched-out DC-8s, which can carry as many as 251 passengers.

Next: SST. Lockheed and Boeing are still locked in lethal competition for Government approval (and subsidies) of a supersonic transport design. To the winner, that approval will be worth at least $10 billion; a decision by President Johnson is expected this year. In their lobbying efforts, Boeing people like to point out that Lockheed has never made a pure-jet commercial passenger plane; Lockheed representatives retort that Boeing has never made a supersonic plane of any sort.

With the SST in the offing, the monster passenger plane such as the 747 is considered by some to be little more than an interim aircraft. Pan American clearly had this in mind when it specified that Boeing construct its 747 planes strong enough to be converted into cargo carriers. Actually, the 747 and the SST will likely complement each other. For passengers who want to fly a long distance in a supersonic hurry, the SST will be available at premium rates; but such will be the low operating costs of the 747 that a customer who is willing to take from 51 to six hours to fly from New York to London may be able to do so for as little as $100.

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