Past imperfect

Once, airlines were identified by the larger-than-life characters at the helm. Juan Trippe founded Pan Am and TWA became one of Howard Hughes’s many interests. Here in Australia, the likes of Kendell, Hazelton, Conellan, Butler and MacRobertson- Miller bore the name of their founders on the fuselage. Similarly, Boeing, Douglas and McDonnell were people, not just manufacturers. Within those firms, even some of the chief engineers and designers became folklore. Joe Sutter is spoken of as the “Father of the 747” and his name will forever be inextricably linked with one of the greatest civil aircraft of all time.

These were real people, complete with personalities, eccentricities and foibles. In the cockpits were steelyjawed war veterans who wrestled their aircraft to the ground come hell or high water. and beware the co-pilot who didn’t know his place. Perhaps this is why people continue to read Ernest K. Gann’s title, Fate is the Hunter and wonder at the sight of a DC-3 sweeping overhead. It is hard to imagine that a book outlining the birth and development of the high-bypass turbofan engine will capture the imagination in the same way.

Rose-tinted glasses can be dangerous in aviation. These people, times and aircraft were a necessary part of the process but, just like any birth, behind the romance and happy snaps the pain cannot be denied. Unassisted by weather radar or warnings of approaching terrain, airline crews once descended with nothing but a potentially unreliable beam radiating from a ground-based navigation aid.

In some parts of the world, that is still how it’s done. But is that really how we wish to convey our passengers in the 21st Century? There is no denying the statistics: commercial aviation has become increasingly safer with each passing decade. True, there are spikes, particularly when there is a major generational change in technology, or even a lesser change in the most recent case of the Boeing 737 MAX. Still, hull losses and the loss of life have decreased dramatically since post-World War Two to a state today where aviation has a safety record of which it can be rightly proud. It should be equally proud that as an industry it generally doesn’t rest on its laurels but continues to pursue even greater levels of safety.

And just as the characters have changed, so too have the economics.

Many small regional airlines around the world have given in to economiesof- scale, consumed by larger airlines, merged with one-time competitors, or disappeared altogether. The aircraft themselves tend to build on the generation before rather than emerging as revolutionary new designs such as the Boeing 747 or Aerospatiale/BAC Concorde. An existing airframe is taken and tweaked in the virtual world to eke out more miles, speed, altitude or passengers as the market demands.

Before the aircraft ever graces the skies, the computer modelling can offer a fairly accurate indication of an aircraft’s anticipated performance.

So therein lies the inevitable trade-off. After only a little more than a century, commercial aviation has matured from frail rag and tube biplanes to fuel-efficient global travellers, piercing the stratosphere and nudging the speed of sound. It has been an amazing journey. However, just as a smartphone image may be more ‘accurate’ than a Rembrandt portrait from the 17th Century, does it have the same soul? Will it be revered in 400 years’ time? Such evolution has allowed a far greater reach, whether it is air travel or placing a high-resolution camera into everybody’s pocket. With such change has come an economy of time and cost that has permitted more people to access connectivity when and where they want it. For those tasked with the practical aspects of air transport, it is necessary and welcome. Safer, more efficient travel for more people is the goal and one would imagine that this same goal existed for the pioneers and visionaries of aviation. And while we may sometimes whimsically long for the romance of the airways of the past, those who founded the industry may well be in awe of where it stands today.

As the Boeing 747 edges closer to its own sunset, the four-engined giant possibly best sums up the changing of the guard. It was a design that changed the world, desired by Juan Trippe and fathered by Joe Sutter. It is an aircraft with a story, if not a life, of its own. Its time has come and that is to be expected but it may represent more than the passing of an aircraft. It may be the passing of an era in aviation when personalities existed not only in aircraft design but in those that brought them to be.

‘The 747 probably best sums up the changing of the guard’