HOW HE SEES IT Flight progress gone nowhere in 34 years
By GIL KLEIN
MEDIA GENERAL NEWS SERVICE
On a recent red-eye flight from San Diego to Atlanta, I got to thinking about the centennial celebration of flight.
With everyone toting their carry-on luggage like so many refugees, we crammed six-across into narrow seats where I couldn't stretch my legs.
It was a spine curling, uncomfortable four hours. And I still had to wait 21/2 hours for a connecting flight to Washington.
Granted, this might sound like whining to those who crossed the continent in covered wagons, but I thought it said a lot about what has and hasn't happened in the first century of air travel.
All of the gee-whiz developments occurred in the first 66 years. Man went from lying on a glorified kite, hopping for 59 seconds, to landing on the moon.
But what's happened in the last 34 years, especially for the average Joe who spends a lot of time changing planes in Charlotte? In terms of speed and comfort, not much.
I visited the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum's new Udvar-Hazy Center near Washington's Dulles Airport to test my thesis. Inside a building three football-fields long are dozens of aircraft representing the development of flight from biplanes to the space shuttle.
Prominently placed near the museum's center is the first commercial jet aircraft, a Boeing 707 with yellow and brown stripes running down its body to a yellow tail. It had four jet engines, two on each wing. Anyone seeing it land at Dulles wouldn't look twice; it looks so much like a modern jet.
Yet it began service on July 15, 1954 -- nearly a half-century ago -- and it flew at a top speed of 582 miles an hour. It was a tremendous improvement over the slow, less reliable propeller planes. I remember how excited I was the first time I flew in a jet in 1960.
I asked Bob van der Linden, the museum's curator of air transportation, how that 707's speed compares with today's aircraft -- say the one I flew from San Diego to Atlanta.
"The 707 flew at about the same speed as today's planes," he said. "Where we were in 1954 is about where we are today."
Concorde's conundrums
But how about the Anglo/French Concorde? The supersonic airliner with its distinctive needle nose took its first flight at 1,350 mph -- twice the speed of sound -- four months before the moon landing.
It represented the future of air travel, and when Congress refused to fund an American version, many predicted U.S. aviation would be left behind in its contrails.
Now, in a back-to-the future time warp, the last Concorde sits in this museum. It's a stunningly beautiful plane, but only held 100 passengers. No private airline could afford to buy one and few passengers could afford to fly in one -- fast and luxurious as it was.
The Concorde just couldn't overcome the law of physics, van der Linden said. A supersonic plane creates a sonic boom. The bigger the plane, the bigger the boom. No one wants a sonic boom shaking the china on the ground for the sake of a few passengers in a hurry.
Both Boeing and Europe's Airbus, the world's two largest aircraft builders, have announced new models. Neither is supersonic. The Airbus' is a little bigger than a 747. Both are more efficient. But the average flyer won't notice.
Commercial aviation has become just another form of mass transit, about as glamorous as riding the bus. Remember when people used to dress up to fly? That's long gone.
After deregulation, airlines learned that passengers will put up with uncomfortable seats and lousy -- or no -- food if they can brag about cheap tickets.
So here's to you Orville Wright, the first man to fly a plane. You put the world in the air. But at least you got to lie down and stretch out. My advice to you: don't take the red eye from California.
Scripps Howard News Service