Curiosity About Jumbos “Satisfied” - 1970 Flight

[Dave Homewood]

This report has to be by one of the first Kiwis to fly aboard a Boeing 747, and he was not impressed. From the Press back on 20th of August 1970.

Curiosity About Jumbos “Satisfied”

(From DAVID BARBER, staff correspondent, N.Z.P.A ) SINGAPORE, August 17.

Flying’s the way to travel, say the ads, and a jumbo jet is the modern way to fly I thought as I made the booking for my first flight on the world’s biggest passenger aircraft.

It was a decision I and 292 other passengers with similar thoughts in mind were to regret long before the giant ship of the air with the tail taller than a six-storey building even got off the ground. The normal jet flight time between Tokyo and Hong Kong is a crisp three hours and a half, usually passed pleasantly with a couple of drinks, a meal, a quiet read and a doze before touchdown at Kai Tak Airport. My jumbo jet debut lasted 13 tiring, hungry, exasperating and maddening hours between the time I left my hotel in Tokyo and arrived at a Hong Kong hotel at 4 o’clock in the morning.

Lessons For Air N.Z.
We were the victims of what the airlines euphemistically call “teething troubles,” and we suffered from a combination of mechanical faults, air traffic congestion, and other factors. I, for one, hope Air New Zealand will take heed of the lessons being learned by present jumbo operators and iron out all their “bugs" before they begin shuttling passengers in and out of Auckland and Christchurch on their Douglas DC-10s in 1973.

My introduction to the “first of the new breed of giant jets” began when I arrived at Haneda Airport, Tokyo, 1 hour 25 minutes before take-off time after the customary tortuous journey through the Kamikaze traffic of the world’s largest city. The early reporting time was necessary, I had been forewarned, because of the large number of passengers to undergo—l quote—“the latest in boarding procedures” before experiencing "the utmost in comfort” and “the finest in aircraft performance.”

Still Waiting.
Two hours later, while still awaiting the final stage of the latest in boarding procedures in a hot, overcrowded departure lounge as comfortable as a New Zealand bar in 6 o’clock closing days, we were informed that the aircraft was late arriving. In fact, it was circling Tokyo waiting for a gap in the traffic to land.

Nearly three hours after arriving at the airport I actually got on the plane, keen to marvel at its—again I quote from my personal copy of the in-flight magazine—“spacious intimacy,” “luxurious seating” and “superior design.’

But then Shelley Berman —or his double—came on the air posing as the captain. “Ah, good evening, ladies and gentlemen . . . welcome aboard . . . I'm afraid we have a li’l problem ... a hydraulic leak in the number four engine . . . should have it fixed in 10 to 20 minutes . . . but it could take a little longer.”

He also apologised for the heat in the cabin, but the air conditioning was working at only 25 per cent efficiency, he said, so they were going to turn the main lights off to cool it down. The personal reading lights wouldn't work either then, and after an hour sitting in the dark some of us were rapidly losing whatever “cool” we had. 

Eventually “Shelley Perman” announced, with appropriate apologies that we would be on the ground for at least another hour. The lights came on and a couple of drinks were served. After a rising chorus of murmurings from the passengers we were allowed to disembark—more than two hours after boarding—and ushered into the transit lounge. There, with lunch a distant memory, the 293 passengers swarmed in on plates of tiny sandwiches—and watched yet another conventional jet take off for Hong Kong.

5 1⁄4 Hours Late
Five hours and a quarter after the scheduled take off times, the world’s biggest passenger aircraft actually got off the ground. An hour later—or shortly after midnight—we were served dinner, and at 2.30 in the morning, right on time, the pride of the fleet gave us our promised soft touchdown at Hong Kong. All that remained then was to wait another hour for the “containerised baggage system with coded baggage tags” to find our luggage.

The pilot declined to be interviewed. Most of the other passengers were not so reticent, but in the main their views were unprintable.

A recent “New York Times" report indicates that my experience was hardly unique. It said one airline acknowledged that only 25 to 30 per cent of its 40 daily Jumbo flights left within 15 minutes of the scheduled take-off time.

Some delays ran into hours and outright cancellations were all too common.

Boeing says the 747 has a tremendous passenger acceptance and an airline official says: “Many people want to go on a jumbo to see what it’s like.”


That’s right, my curiosity is satisfied.

[Dave Homewood]

If you, like me, were wondering who Shelley Berman was, I looked him up and found this:



Quite amusing.

[chinapilot]

Ha - amazing really that this iconic aircraft would open up air travel to the masses transporting millions and directly and indirectly provide employment to thousands of people.

The -100 series did have some engine teething troubles but the aircraft was to eclipse the self important ramblings of a ‘staff correspondent’ 🤣

[Dave Homewood]

I don't think it was just one man's opinion though in those early days. Like all new aircraft types there seemed to be loads of issues that needed sorting. Here is another article I spotted that was published in The Press on the 11th of February 1970, just weeks after the very first Boeing 747 Jumbo Jets entered service.

JUMBO THE GIANT NEW JETS ARE STUMBLING TO GREATNESS
(BY MICHAEL DONNE, in the "Financial Times." London)
(Reprinted by arrangement)

Michael Donne, aeronautical correspondent of the “Financial Times,” London, after 12 hours of Jumbo flight, looks at the new jets.

You know that you are going to experience something different from the moment you get your boarding pass at check-in. Instead of the customary card, Pan American gives you a blue-covered folder to hold your ticket, with a colour-code on the back—purple, white, red, gold and orange. They correspond to the sections of the aeroplane—purple for first-class, the rest for the economy-class “salons.”

Your seat number is written against a colour, and as you board through one of the three doors on each side used for loading (there are up to five doors each side, if needed), one of the 14 stewards and stewardesses directs you to your seat.

It Is really like entering a private theatre. If you enter by a forward door and look back, a sea of gaily-coloured seats swims away for 62 yards towards the tail, the old “tube” look of passenger cabins eliminated by the various galley and lavatory areas that interrupt the cabin.

There are two aisles, and the seats are arranged so that only on one side is there that old horror, the three-abreast configuration. In the centre, between the aisles, and on one side, the seats are two-by-two, so that getting in and out is easier. The triple-seating is only on the port side, and Pan American says the middle seat of the three is the one assigned last.

All the seats are 10 per cent wider than before, and each one has an arm-rest that can be flipped up to give more room. To add to the air of spaciousness, the 20-foot-wide cabin is also several feet higher than in a 707.

More Comfortable
It all sounds wonderful. The reality is somewhat less than that, but having now flown in the Jumbo for the grand total of 12 hours, covering some 8000 miles or more, including a United States trans-continental and an Atlantic overnight flight in economy-class seats— l can vouch for the fact that the wider seats are more comfortable, although they do not recline quite enough for my liking.

The engine noise level is lower than in 707 cabins, especially in the forward sections, and although still obtrusive in the rear sections, it is nowhere near enough to drown conversation, or make it painful, as in the rear section of a 707.

Indeed, the sound of passengers chattering may become one of the new sounds of aviation in the 747. The aisles and spaces beside the doors and galleys and lavatories (there are 12 of those, in my view still not enough, especially on an overnight (flight in a fully-laden aircraft) do make it possible to circulate more.

But one brilliant innovation deserves high praise—every pair of seats has its own numbered “locker” close (to the ceiling, numbered so that there can be no mistakes. They are strong, swing down smoothly and can take coats, handbags and all but the very heaviest bric-a-brac hand baggage that passengers bring on to aeroplanes.

How Reliable?
So much for the aeroplane from the comfort point of view. But the question that must arise in the light of the publicity given to the troubles it has encountered so far is: how reliable is it? Many of the snags that have been encountered with the aeroplane—such as the faulty cabin doors that proved difficult to shut (which upset an early flight from London) and faulty cabin electrics—are no more than the teething troubles expected on any new aeroplane. Even so, Pan American feels that it is getting rather more than it would have liked or deserves.

The other problems have been more serious, and revolve around the big Pratt and Whitney JT9D-3 turbofan engines, each of which delivers 43,500lb of thrust. The original problem was that of a minute distortion, stemming from the way the engines were mounted on the wings. This distortion, called “ovalisation,” robbed the engine of some thrust and caused fuel consumption to rise under certain hot-weather conditions.
Solving it—and it has now been solved —took several weeks of hard work, and caused a delay in deliveries of aircraft to the airlines, in turn delaying the start of passenger services. The modification involves fitting a “yoke” or “thrust-frame” on to the engine, which helps to spread the load and thus eliminates “ovalisation.” When I walked down the Pratt and Whitney assembly lines at East Hartford, Connecticut, recently, I saw stacks of “thrust-frames” waiting to be fitted on to engines as they moved along the line, and Pratt and Whitney is now delivering to Boeing modified engines incorporating this device.

Safety Unaffected
Some of the Jumbo jets built so far are being delivered to airlines without this modification, but will be fitted with it later. The aircraft are quite safe: the problem does not affect safety, but does involve economic penalties in airline operations. The Jumbo which made the Atlantic inaugural passenger flight was fitted with “unmodified” engines. The new engine problem that has now arisen also does not create a safety hazard, but does cause severe operational problems. It delayed the inaugural flight 6 1⁄2 hours out of New York, costing Pan American a few passengers who rebooked to London on to other airlines, but in London it cost the airline a lot more passengers—128 —who declined to wait for the incoming Jumbo that was due to take them to the United States.

What is so worrying for Pan American, and other would-be operators of the Jumbo, is that this difficulty could recur without warning —it hit the inaugural flight, for example, while it was taxiing, loaded, to the runway for take-off. Put simply, the problem is severe overheating of the engine that could cause serious damage if not rectified immediately.

It stems from the fact that the intakes on each of the Pratt and Whitney engines are very big, gulping in vast amounts of air to feed a device that is required to generate 43,500lb of thrust. When the aircraft is slowly taxiing to the runway for take-off, each engine is idling at only 4 per cent of its full power.

Under certain crosswind conditions, for example, at turning points on the taxi-ways, the crosswind effectively blankets off the flow of air into one of the engines—so far, it seems to have happened only to the outboard engines—so, that the air-starved compressor in the engine stalls, the fuel mixture is still being burned, and the temperature rises sharply.

Damage Possible
Unless spotted and action taken within seconds (and there is a warning light on the flight deck), severe engine damage could result. The pilot has no alternative but to shut off the engine, and go back to the terminal. Although, like any other four-engined airliner, the Jumbo can fly and land safely on three engines, if one should fail in flight, no pilot wants to take off, especially with a fully-laden Jumbo, on three engines, and no-one would expect him to do so.

The problem first occurred when the Jumbo was first leaving Kennedy to fly to London on a demonstration tour. At that time, the flight was delayed three hours for an engine change. The same difficulty has occurred twice since then, the most recent time being on the inaugural flight departure, again from Kennedy, when in bitter weather there were crosswinds of up to 30 to 40 knots sweeping across the airfield.
The problem is worrying. Passengers do not like aeroplanes with snag-ridden engines; and airlines do not like losing money through such problems. Work is under way to try to fix it. One solution might be to fit special vanes in the engine air intakes to deflect crosswinds.
Another might be procedural —allowing the Jumbo to taxi much faster along cleared taxi-ways to the runway threshold, so as to keep the engines running at a higher speed.

Another might be to toughen the brakes so that while waiting at junctions on taxi-ways the engines could be run-up harder, for it seems that the problem dies away when more power is put on, the suction effect of the engines countering the crosswind component
An answer must be found and not only by Pratt and Whitney. All the large engine companies at work on the high-thrust, large-intake engines will be watching to see how Pratt and Whitney copes.

Beyond the aircraft itself lie the operational problems that are only now being experienced, although in all fairness it must be stressed that they have been raised in the past on a number of occasions.

10 Miles Airspace
One of the most significant is the ruling, to be implemented both in the United States and in Britain, and probably in other countries too, that no other aircraft should be less than ten miles behind a Jumbo while it is landing or less than four minutes behind it during take-off.

On approach, there must be a “height gap” of 2000 feet between a Jumbo and other aircraft. This is because the Jumbo, with its great bulk and four powerful engines, leaves a wake of disturbed air that could flip over a light aircraft, and give a big one a very bumpy ride.

These are interim measures that may be relaxed in the light of further operational experience. At Heathrow, they are not expected initially to cause too much difficulty in scheduling arrivals and departures, since there is only one Jumbo in and one out daily at present. Even by the end of this year, there will have been only 3500 Jumbo movements at the airport, representing 5 per cent of all long-haul aircraft movements there.
The problem will get progressively more difficult thereafter, however, as more and more Jumbos come on to the routes. By 1972, there will be 14,000 Jumbo movements a year at Heathrow or 25 per cent of total long-haul aircraft movements and rising fast. By then there may be cause to divert more traffic to Gatwick, south of London, and to revise the "stacking” and “sequencing” of aircraft into the airport.

The problems of timing arrivals and departures will fall on the airlines themselves to solve through their Airlines Scheduling Committee, in the light of conditions laid down by the British Airports Authority and the National Air Traffic Control Services at the time.

Passenger Handling
So far as passenger handling is concerned, the Airports Authority is encouraged by the success of its interim measures, put into operation last week. These will be progressively replaced from this spring by the new long-haul permanent buildings, now nearing completion, including the special aircraft stands, passenger lounges and 900-foot long pier with its moving “walkway.”

Throughout the world, some of the more enlightened airport authorities are sweating to get Jumbo jet handling arrangements completed. But at some airports, little account seems to have been taken of the problem to come.

To some extent, the problems are likely to continue for some time, until the Jumbo has effectively been “run in.” The problem for Pan American in the next few weeks is one of maintaining public confidence in the Jumbo. Passengers may not necessarily be afraid of it, but no-one is going to book himself on it if he can not be sure that it will take-off and get him to his destination on time.

Bowl Of Publicity
Boeing, Pratt and Whitney, and Pan American are all living and suffering in the goldfish-bowl of world publicity they have created for themselves by building, buying and flying the world’s biggest commercial jet-liner.

While the thing goes well, the publicity is fine, but when things go wrong, it can be one of the most expensive and painful forms of misery. It may be a new experience for them, but in Britain we know all about it. B.0.A.C. suffered with the original Comet jet, and then with the Britannia airliner; Cunard suffered with the Q.E.2.

What is important to remember about the Jumbo is that 28 airlines have ordered 186 of them, and the financial stakes are colossal—over £2000m in orders alone.

The problems may be tough, but they will be fixed in time, and the Jumbo will then go on to become one of the world’s great aeroplanes. The contribution it will make to world air travel in the 1970s and 1980s can hardly be gauged at this stage, but many a race has been won despite a stumbling start.

[ErrolC]

Jun 16, 2022 8:16:27 GMT 12 Dave Homewood said:

I don't think it was just one man's opinion though in those early days. Like all new aircraft types there seemed to be loads of issues that needed sorting. Here is another article I spotted that was published in The Press on the 11th of February 1970, just weeks after the very first Boeing 747 Jumbo Jets entered service.

JUMBO THE GIANT NEW JETS ARE STUMBLING TO GREATNESS
(BY MICHAEL DONNE, in the "Financial Times." London)
...

There are two aisles, and the seats are arranged so that only on one side is there that old horror, the three-abreast configuration. In the centre, between the aisles, and on one side, the seats are two-by-two, so that getting in and out is easier. The triple-seating is only on the port side, and Pan American says the middle seat of the three is the one assigned last.

All the seats are 10 per cent wider than before, and each one has an arm-rest that can be flipped up to give more room. To add to the air of spaciousness, the 20-foot-wide cabin is also several feet higher than in a 707.

I wonder how long the 2-4-3 seating lasted? They were somewhat weight limited to start with I think?

[davidd]

I was intrigued to read on the PPRuNe forums (several years ago) of the early days of the jumbo - it certainly had plenty of problems, with lack of engine power seeming to be the overwhelmingly obvious one. These were all the opinions of the pilots of the day - and not just the ones standing and watching these behemoths taking off and climbing out, but the ones who were actually sitting in the seats up front. Seems that the engine manufacturers promised much, but the engines themselves delivered quite a lot less than expected, an obvious problem for a very large aircraft, fitted with engines custom-designed for the job.

I recall that there were somewhat similar problems with the earlier military KC-135s of MATS on their world-wide shuttle flights, which sometimes got into trouble getting out of Harewood in the 1960s -they were definitely very underpowered on the hotter summer days, and everybody in Christchurch knew about it! The amazing thing was that the manufacturers, operators and presumably the regulators were totally aware of these problems, but carried on services regardless whilst the engine manufacturers busied themselves with trying to find the missing pounds of thrust in the early (and rather puny) engines. The pilots were constantly embarrassed by their sluggish climb rates, even as earlier but smaller jet airliners easily outclimbed the jumbos (not that it was a competition of course!) Needless to say, more powerful versions of these engines eventually made their appearance, and things looked up - the regulators must have accepted that although slow climb rates for the day did not look good, they were probably not particularly dangerous, so long as those 4 engines kept spinning.

[chinapilot]

The second article is interesting - at least the guy obviously had some technical expertise.

The engine problems were eventually solved. My first flight in a 747 was with BOAC SYD-LHR via about 6 stops in 1972. We did have an engine shutdown enroute and a long wait for a change but it just added to the adventure.

Plenty of room in economy then as they were having trouble filling them up.

Talking to Pan Am pilots who flew them initially rate of climb wasn’t great. This was solved by the time the -200 series was developed.

All thanks to Juan Trippe who had the vision to order them ( nearly sent Pan Am broke ).