While the pandemic has ravaged the airline industry these past eighteen months, it’s been all-too-easy to focus on the doom and gloom. Thankfully, airlines are starting to slowly recover and someday we might look back at this period as just another chapter in the acclaimed history of aviation. Over the years, the industry has seen all manner of twists and turns and all manner of aircraft, from the open-air cockpits of yesteryear's barnstormers to the first jetliners to the rise and fall of supersonic travel. What’s gotten us to where we are today? Let’s find out by exploring some of the most influential and important commercial aircraft that have ever graced our skies.
St Petersburg, Florida, is not generally considered a city that can boast of an aviation “first.” But, on January 1, 1914, the St. Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line was born there. It was the world’s first scheduled airline service designed to provide an air link connecting the two cities across Tampa Bay. Former St. Pete Mayor Abraham C. Pheil won the honor of being the first airline passenger with his auction bid of $400. (The airline donated the money to the city for the purchase of harbor lights.) Traveling in that first passenger airplane made of wood, fabric, and wire was a far cry from flying in today’s comfortable, temperature-controlled airliners. From all accounts, however, those first airline flights were not so bad, provided you didn’t mind sitting out in the breeze with water spraying in your face. Passengers sat on a wooden seat in the hull of a two-place seaplane that didn’t have a windshield and rarely flew more than five feet above the water! The aircraft was a Benoist Model 14, built by St. Louise manufacturer Thomas W. Benoist, best known for the sparking batteries and automobile self-starters he constructed. An early aviation visionary, he said he often “dreamed of the skies filled with air lanes carrying the world’s passenger and freight traffic.” Unfortunately, that was not the time and the unprofitable and expensive service only lasted a few months but proved that aircraft with good maintenance and competent pilots could provide safe public transportation.
Fast forward two decades to the mid-1930s when the Douglas DC-3 first took to the skies. That airplane became the backbone of many established airlines, and even today there are still a few serving as passenger planes and cargo carriers. The DC-3 truly revolutionized commercial air travel, as it was one of the first planes to have a retractable undercarriage and the first to profit by exclusively carrying passengers. It was created in the US by the Douglas Aircraft Company and was essentially the reason for the company's success. It's estimated that around 13,000 of the aircraft were built. The plane first flew on December 17,1935 at Clover Field in Santa Monica, California, and later popularized transcontinental travel in America. It would fly from coast to coast in just fifteen hours, with only three refueling stops. The interior of the DC-3 was much like the airliners we know today, with twenty seats in a two-by-two configuration, but service on board was far beyond what we might expect on present-day jetliners. Flying at a time when air travel was still considered quite glamorous, passengers on board the Douglas DC-3 were served cocktails and steaks and ate with Barton Silverware. Pilots would often stroll the cabin to personally greet travelers once the plane was cruising at altitude, and the sleeper flights even had curtained berths with duvets and feather mattresses for pampered passengers.
The development of the Constellation in 1943 served to put Lockheed Martin on the map. A pretty small player in the aviation business at the time, focusing on a few larger, single-engine planes, Lockheed was vastly overshadowed by the industry-leader Douglas. Then they met Howard Hughes. By the early 1940s, Hughes had a majority stake in Trans World Airlines (TWA) and looked to Lockheed to build an aircraft that would give him the jump on both United and American Air Lines. The deals were done in secret, with a caveat that no other airline would be allowed to purchase the Lockheed-developed airplane until TWA had dozens of them. In fact, he personally financed the airline’s 40-aircraft order. It was worth $18 million and was the largest order in aviation history at the time. It also proved to be the turning point for Lockheed as it developed the aircraft that would soon be named the Lockheed Constellation, but always referred to as the “Connie.”
To fulfill Hughes' requirements for something really outstanding, Lockheed had to be different. This meant bringing to aviation a number of innovations not previously seen on passenger planes. The Constellation would have the first hydraulically-boosted power controls, would be faster than the majority of WWII fighter jets and would also feature a pressurized cabin to allow the plane to fly above most weather disturbances. For many years following its introduction with TWA in 1949, the Connie was the only passenger aircraft that offered the pressurization needed to fly at higher altitudes. As the first commercial aircraft to fly above 12,500 feet, this took its passengers out of the “air sickness” zone where the weather was more active. Settling into the jet stream at 20,000 feet plus was not only more comfortable for passengers, but also less fuel-intensive, enabling the Constellation to operate the first nonstop US coast-to-coast commercial flights. At the height of her popularity, airlines all over the world operated the Constellation. More than 800 aircraft were built in total, with operators including Pan Am, Air France, BOAC, KLM, Qantas, Lufthansa and TAP Air Portugal.
The Boeing 707 was the first successful commercial passenger jetliner. It entered service on October 26, 1958 when PanAm made the first jet flight from New York to Paris. That flight took 8 hours and 41 minutes, including a refueling stop in the Canadian city of Gander, Newfoundland. The 707 came with vast improvements over earlier planes in terms of passenger capacity, range, and speed. It actually revolutionized air travel and was fervently embraced by America’s airlines for most of their domestic and transatlantic flights throughout the 1960s. The last scheduled Boeing 707 flight in the United States was a TWA flight from Miami to New York in 1983 and it remained in production until 1991. In total, the company produced 1,010 of these aircraft. The B707 was credited with inaugurating the “Jet Age” in commercial travel and became the most popular airliner of the day. It forced many changes in travel. Changes were made to airport terminals, runways, airline catering, baggage handling, reservations systems, and air traffic control. The B707 represented the cutting edge of aviation technology. It became the symbol of air travel in general as illustrated in Arthur Halley’s 1968 blockbuster novel “Airport” and the 1970 movie of the same name in which the Boeing jetliner played a “starring” role.
Concorde was another iconic airliner. A joint effort between British and French aero-engineering firms saw the world's first and only supersonic airliner take off over 50 years ago in March of 1969. Traveling faster than the speed of sound, Concorde could fly from London to New York in under four hours. For three decades, it looked to change the world of air travel drastically with its luxurious, high-speed service. But in 2003 operations ceased and many of the aircraft are now on display in museums around the world, including those in New York, Washington, DC, Bristol, England and Toulouse, France. Just twenty of these groundbreaking jets were built, and all were operated by either British Airways or Air France. The plane was at the center of a terrible accident in 2000, when an Air France Concorde burst into flames and crashed shortly after take-off, killing all 109 souls on board and even four people on the ground. However, contrary to popular belief, this wasn't the reason for its retirement. Concorde's final demise was largely due to cost – the aircraft was simply too expensive to run, and it was unaffordable for the general public with a one-way London-New York ticket in 2003 costing over £4,000. It was also incredibly difficult to find routes the plane could travel. Because of the sonic boom produced as Concorde broke the sound barrier, it wasn't legal to fly over highly populated areas, limiting the aircraft's use around the world. Inside the plane though, passengers would have little knowledge of breaking the sound barrier as the shockwaves didn’t reach inside the cabin. Instead, those lucky travelers were treated to fine wines and spirits with caviar, lobster, and filet mignon while cruising at 1,350 miles per hour blissfully observing the curvature of the Earth at 60,000 feet above sea level.
Recently hitting the headlines with news of its cancellation, the Airbus A380 enjoyed a short production life of only twelve years but was quite the record-breaker. The A380’s known as a superjumbo jet as it’s the largest passenger airliner to hit the skies, capable of carrying up to 853 travelers at one time across two decks. It was the first airliner to have two full decks for passengers and it‘s serviced two of the longest non-stop flights in the world; namely Emirates Airlines’ Auckland to Dubai route (I’ve flown that one on the return) and Qantas Airways’ Dallas/Fort Worth to Sydney route (not yet). Singapore Airlines was responsible for the A380's maiden flight and, while it's proven to be popular with passengers across the world, it’s been deemed economically inefficient by the airlines themselves. Emirates was the biggest buyer of the A380 making up nearly half of the 251 Airbus production orders. Currently, the airline has 115 A380 aircraft in its fleet. But that number will grow to118 after its final three are delivered in November. The airline plans to keep the A380 in its fleet for at least another twenty years, offering comfortable long-haul travel on the modern, spacious jet. One of the motivations for developing this aircraft was its ability to carry more passengers using just one slot at busy airports. Emirates has made this work well, operating the A380 to a number of busy airports with high occupancy. The plane is huge with over 5,000 square feet of floor space. It’s truly a giant with a wingspan exceeding 260 feet and a length of over 239 feet and a maximum take-off weight of more than 1.2 million pounds!
Every one of these famous aircraft has left its imprint on the face of aviation. And, of course, there are others that we should look at in this Blog and we’ll do so in future posts.
Until next time…safe travels.
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