Same tube, different decade

Australian Aviation’s first issue sharply criticised the industry for failing to invest in widebody aircraft for domestic routes. (See “Times are Fleeting”, this issue.) This was not solely the airlines’ fault, of course, with the government-mandated Two Airlines Policy creating a state-directed duopoly on most of the domestic network. Indeed, it would be four more years until Australia’s first domestic widebody, the Trans Australia Airlines-operated Airbus A300B4 registered VH-TAA and named James Cook, arrived at Melbourne Tullamarine from Toulouse via Bahrain, Madras, Kuala Lumpur and Perth.

Up front, TAA’s A300 offered recliner seats in first class arranged in a 2-2-2 layout, plus “a separate business class”, its ads proudly proclaimed, in the same 2-4-2 configuration as economy, “with a separate quiet zone, up to four inches more legroom than economy, and meals to first class standard.”

In economy, that same 2-4-2 configuration — almost identical to modern A330s thanks to the same fuselage being used on the A300, A310, A330 and A340 — must have felt just as surprising to passengers used to tighter tubes as watching passengers easily crossing their legs in economy on TAA’s ads (readily available online) feels to us today.

Of course, TAA’s successor Qantas operated six-abreast business class on its A330s relatively recently, both in the “cocktail table” layout that was really international premium economy and in the more comfortable Skybed Mark II angled lie-flat configuration.

It’s fascinating to note that 1977’s Australian Aviation was unconvinced that widebody aircraft are beneficial for the (nominally, then, male) passenger compared with narrowbodies.

“What will the passenger get out of the wide-bodied?” Stanley Brogden asked forty years ago, a time when the ‘aircraft’ in that phrase was silent. “He will not get a faster flight, for the speeds have not increased to any appreciable extent. He will have more company in flight, as the wide-bodieds will have eight or nine seats abreast. On short flights, such as Sydney, this does not matter, but he may feel the difference to Perth, for the toilets are more in use on longer journeys.”

“The wide-bodied’s advantages are largely for the airlines and for the airport authority, the Department of Transport. But they will have a spin-off for the passenger probably in that their better economics will help to keep down the steady rise in air fares. They will not reduce fares but they will cushion the otherwise higher rises.”

The lowest fares on domestic flights these days, of course, aren’t usually on widebodies: they’re on Boeing 737 and Airbus A320 family aircraft operated by Tigerair and Jetstar. Those aircraft, too, have an uncanny resemblance to the single aisle jets of 1977. The first generation Boeing 727, nicknamed the “whispering T-Jet” by TAA in a sign of just how far improvements in aircraft noise have come, were in the process of being retired by TAA and Ansett as our first issue went to print.

The 727-200 Advanced versions, however, were still being delivered to Australia’s airlines. On these widely used aircraft, the economy standard was 3-3 and the pointy end, if one existed, was 2-2 — exactly what you’ll find in today’s A320 and 737 aircraft, perhaps unsurprisingly with the latter since it shares the same fuselage cross-section as the 727 (plus the 707 before it and the 757 after it).

Like today’s Tigerair and Jetstar, inflight entertainment was largely limited to looking out the window or whatever you happened to bring along with you — but not too much, given that the overhead bin space was really just a closed hatrack. Thank goodness most of your fellow passengers were shorter than today and wouldn’t mind popping their things under the seat in front of them.

Forty years ago, the uniquely restrictive regulation of the mid and late 1970s was about to start giving way to a deregulated, open skies policy, although it would take another twelve years for the Two Airlines Policy to officially end. After the various rises, falls and rises of Qantas, ANA, TAA, Ansett, Virgin Blue, Jetstar, Tiger, Virgin Australia and any number of smaller operations, and the introduction of dozens of aircraft with further dozens of seat types, it’s almost incredible to see how similar the jets of 1977 looked to the aircraft of today.