This Strip Is Necessary

Before long, disembarking jet passengers may be surprised to see workmen behind them busily carting off the whole insides--seats, galley, cabin partitions--of their aircraft. In Seattle last week, United Air Lines showed off the plane that can do the strip: the 600-m.p.h. Boeing 727 QC (for Quick Change), first airliner designed to moonlight as a cargo plane after turning in a full day, and fat profits, as a passenger carrier.

Because airlines needed a medium-haul plane that could keep on earning after prime daytime passenger hours, United helped Boeing jigger its tri-jet 727 to set the entire cabin area on eleven quickly detachable pallets that can be moved over small rails and rollers in the plane's floor. To convert the 96-passenger plane for cargo service, workmen roll the pallets out of the cargo hatch on to a van, fold up the hat racks, then roll in 20 tons of cargo on eight pallets from another van. Total time: 30 minutes. In all, eleven U.S. and foreign lines have ordered 93 of the $5.1 million planes. United, which has ordered 30, will start the first QC service in August, hauling passengers seven hours a day, and when that's done, cargo three hours a night.

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