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JUMBO JET

Boeing 747

For those bound closer to the earth, the introduction of the Boeing 747 was treated as a revolution in air travel. The Christian Science Monitor greeted its first commercial flight on 21 January 1970 with the kind of words usually reserved for things spiritual. "As the world's physical and mental problems mount," the paper intoned, "so does the need for men to recognize the universality of their brotherhood and the oneness of their basic interests." The New York Times was not far behind: "The 747 will make it possible for more and more people to discover what their neighbors are like on the other side of the world."

Air Bus

What was the big deal? The 747 was huge by the standards of the day. It could carry as many as 490 people, while the next largest commercial plane, the Boeing 707, could accommodate only 132. The press called it an "air bus." Despite its size, the innovative use of a titanium body made it light enough to go great distances. It had a tremendous range, capable of going forty-six hundred nautical miles without refueling. These two features made it an ideal plane for transcontinental flights.

Safety

The sheer number of passengers on board such a plane raised the specter of air disasters on a scale un-heard of before. Boeing had made safety its chief priority in the development of the 747. The opening pages of the design manual Design Objectives and Criteria said, "Safety is the prime design objective of the 747 Design Program; it shall be given first priority in all design decisions." The company swore the plane was safe, and its later record proved them right. Still, there were some terrible tragedies. On 27 March 1977 more than 570 people died when two 747s crashed into each other on the runway of a Canary Islands airport, the worst aviation disaster to date.

Breaking the Bank

By the end of the decade millions of people had traveled in 747s. Initially, though, it was not at all clear that the plane would be a success. It seemed impractical: no airport in the world had terminals that could accommodate its bulk, and everyone knew that the future was in supersonics. Both Boeing and Pan Am, which invested heavily in its development, nearly went broke trying to build it. The team fashioning the 747 at Boeing, led by Joseph Sutter, became known as "Sutter's Runaways" as they consumed the company's money at a rate of $5 million a day. Boeing went on to prosper, but Pan Am declared bankruptcy in the 1980s. The company was principally a victim of harsh economic times and difficulties with leadership, but its investment in the 747 proved a liability.

Supersonics

If the building of the 747 had harsh consequences for some in the industry, it was a bigger success than the Supersonic Transport (SST). Despite federal spending of hundreds of millions of dollars for research and development, the American SST program never got off the ground. Supersonics—planes that can travel faster than the speed of sound—produce a sonic boom as they take off. The idea that this earth-shaking noise would become an everyday occurrence aroused public antipathy, and scientists warned that nitrogen emissions from the high-flying planes would deplete the ozone layer. As a result of the controversy, in March 1971 the Senate canceled funds for the program, effectively halting it. When the French and British governments announced in 1976 that their version of the SST, the Concorde, was ready for passenger service, a lawsuit by environmental group Friends of the Earth held off its arrival for seventeen months. Though finally permitted to land in the United States, passenger service on the Concorde never proved profitable, and in 1979 the French and British governments canceled their development program as well, though existing Concordes continue to fly.