ON FLYING MORE AND ENJOYING IT LESS

For I dipp'd into the future, far as human eye could see, Saw the Vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be; Saw the heavens fill with commerce, argosies of magic sails, Pilots of the purple twilight, dropping down with costly bales . . .

--Tennyson, Locksley Hall

HOW gloriously easy the vision of air transport seemed to the Victorians! And for a while, how reassuringly true it turned out to be! For years now, those "argosies of magic sails" have been gliding in and out of airports as if flight were as natural to man as walking.

Yet the sense of swift ease and mastery of this wonder is swiftly disintegrating. And the heart of the problem, as every airplane passenger knows, is on the ground. Airlines have perfected the art of getting from A to Z, while ignoring the place where all flights begin and end--the airport. Ideally, an airport is a conduit, a place to leave; in reality, it has become a gigantic waiting room, where exasperations multiply like chewing-gum wrappers and cigarette butts on the floor. One woe is the need for a great trek, first as much as three-quarters of a mile from parking lot to terminal, then on to the departure gate through hundreds of yards of echoing, aseptic corridors. Another is the need to stand in line: passengers must queue up to check in, make phone calls, grab a bite to eat, use the toilet, claim baggage, hail a cab. The whole airport experience sometimes becomes such an ordeal that just to enter the airplane is itself a relief.

But even there, delay and confusion continue. "Elephant lines" of as many as 25 planes often wait on runways to take off. A jet may circle for literally hours--hoping for clearance to land. In short, air travel, the great success symbol of 20th century man's conquest of space and time, is on the verge of becoming--like railways, highways, traffic and smog, a fit subject for bad jokes by stand-up comics. (Sample: "There really were three Wright brothers, but one is still stacked up over O'Hare.")

Airport congestion will soon be compounded by new "superjets" like Boeing's 460-passenger 747. By carrying more people, jumbos should reduce the total number of planes in the air. But on the ground, they will disgorge as many suitcases and passengers as three planes do now--and all at once. Says Najeeb Halaby, former administrator of the Federal Aviation Agency and now president of Pan American airlines: "There will probably be only one airport in the world ready for the superjets, and only one parking lot, only one set of highways. And," he adds, "they are not all at the same airport."

An Overdose of Success

Through an infinitely complicated mechanism, 135 million passengers were ticketed last year, encased in pressurized aluminum cabins, hurled aloft by 50,000 Ibs. of jet-engine thrust, comforted with rough California wine and bland Iowa steak. From the moment a plane takes off, it must be watched, first by radar at air-route traffic control centers, then by approach controllers, who assign the ship to a runway or stack it in a holding pattern. The trip costs the passenger about 5.60 per mile.

Congestion turns this miracle of organization and technology into a minatory monster. It devalues air transport's most salable commodities: speed and reliability. It increases hazard; more than 100 near-collisions of commercial planes take place every month. Yet the greatest costs may be social. It is the general public which pays for traffic jams on the highway between airport and city. How is public loss of time and impatience with noise and air pollution to be compensated for?

Despite all obstacles, the growth of air traffic shows no sign of slackening. Ninety-seven percent of the world population has yet to fly. But 45% of U.S. adults have done so at least once, and seductive ads are luring in more and more each year. In the U.S., the volume both of air travelers and freight doubles every six years. Today the civilian air fleet consists of some 2,400 airliners and 112,000 private planes, from tiny Piper Cubs to swift corporate jets. By 1975, the fleet will increase to at least 3,480 jetliners and an overwhelming 170,000 general aviation craft. Can the airways hold them?

Not under the present air-traffic control system, designed in pre-jet days, which not even FAA's $200 million purchase of electronic equipment has succeeded in modernizing. One problem is crowded radio communications which can create dangerous misunderstandings between pilots and controllers. In addition, most airports lack automated landing systems that would permit denser traffic with less danger. As a result, huge "blocks" of airspace are allocated to each plane, limiting the number of planes in any given area and increasing delays.

"Horizontal Elevators'

Only 19,000 air-traffic controllers--20% too few even for present needs--guide the proliferating flocks of planes. Each can monitor only a few aircraft at a time. Despite their life-and-death responsibilities, the controllers earn a maximum $22,178 a year, compared with as much as $65,000 for airline captains. At work, they cannot afford a single mistake. In one dramatic--and symptomatic--incident, a controller who watched a mid-air collision over Maryland on the radar screen later committed suicide. But a number of others show signs of breaking down under the stress of the job.

Most obvious shortage of all is in "concrete"--the industry name for runways, terminals, towers. The U.S. has about 10,000 airports, but 70% of them are just grassy strips. Only 535 are served by scheduled airlines; and of these, a mere 189 have instrument-landing systems. Only 118--the biggest and most congested--use radar.

Theoretically, when an airport's capacity is reached, it should easily be enlargeable. But expanding an airport's facilities is like feeding pigeons; no sooner is demand satisfied than new flights start to arrive and the cycle begins anew. Airlines take great pains to avoid selling the same seat on a flight to two different passengers, yet think nothing of scheduling several peak-hour departures for precisely the same runway and moment.

There is the prospect of change on the horizon. Some cities--most notably Atlanta, Houston, Miami, Tampa and Dallas-Fort Worth--are now spending millions to create jet-age airports. At Tampa, for instance, travelers will park their cars in the terminal, then be whisked by "horizontal elevator" to departure gates. At other new terminals, cars or buses will drop passengers within 600 feet of the gate. Most radical and sensible of all is Los Angeles' plan to carry people via a subterranean transit system to planes on the runway and ready for takeoff.

Alas, new airports produce as much resistance as relief. Most people would rather have an ABM site in their backyard than the constant thunder and stench of a big jetport. Austin Tobin, executive director of the Port of New York Authority, has fought for a fourth New York jetport for almost ten years. "Can we balance the rights of the many against the rights of the few?" he asks. So far, minority rule has won the day, but now something must give.

As so often happens these days, the first step toward reform has turned out to be the shock of failure. Last summer planes were stacked up for hours every day over the "Golden Triangle" airports bounded by New York, Washington and Chicago. Every separate aviation group (each served by its own persuasive lobby in Washington) had its favorite scapegoat. Private pilots blamed the airlines for overscheduling. Airline pilots blamed private aviation for taking up scarce runway space. The air-traffic controllers blamed FAA for not providing enough trained men or electronic equipment. FAA sighed and passed the blame along to Congress for not appropriating enough money. A bill that would have pumped $3 billion into airways and ground facilities never got out of committee.

Even so, the buck-passing generated a market for solutions. Both Eastern and American airlines are developing short takeoff and landing (STOL) aircraft capable of carrying some 100 passengers at 400 m.p.h. on short hops between cities. Out of the Viet Nam war may come new kinds of helicopters, combining rotors and fixed wings. Many cities are discussing an old but excellent idea: expanding small existing airports in order to lure private planes away from big congested jetports.

Better safety devices are being tested. One is a radio transmitter and a device that sets off an alarm when two planes are on collision course. It instructs one pilot to fly up, the other down. To relieve overburdened controllers, the FAA has begun to install computerized radar control systems at a few airports; these automatically print out aircraft identification, altitude and speed.

But all this will take time--and something must be done to avoid another great stack-up this summer. In reluctant response, the Federal Government, starting June 1, will assign hourly quotas for arriving and departing flights at the Golden Triangle airports. This should help divert more private aircraft to small airports, and perhaps persuade airlines to start cutting their peak-hour flights--a decision they should make voluntarily.

Room at the Top

Fortunately, money is starting to pour into the airports. According to the Air Transport Association, 18 airlines will spend $1.5 billion on new airport facilities between now and 1972, another $1 billion by 1976. The airlines have also agreed, albeit without joy, to legislation that would establish a federal Airports/Airways Trust Fund similar to the Highway Trust Fund. Airway users would--very properly--be charged. Taxes on passenger tickets and cargo waybills would also increase.

Under the proposed laws, about $1 billion would be spent on things that every prophet in aviation has been crying for. The number and size of feeder and hub airports would be expanded. The facilities and manpower of the air-traffic control system would be increased, with many controllers' functions automated in the process. As a result, air traffic would be packed more closely--but would move faster and more safely than ever before.

The architects of the "Air Traffic Congestion Relief Act of 1969" intend to impose stern method on the spending. They would require every state to set up a planning agency for airports and would empower the Civil Aeronautics Board to regulate airlines' schedules. In other words, if Congress passes the act, an ambitious and overdue program of catching up with well-defined needs will start. But is such a catch-up program a real solution?

Unless Washington goes further, even improved air transport systems will soon be outmoded. State planning bodies will undeniably unsnarl some of the overlapping, bickering jurisdictions. But what aviation needs most is precisely what it has received least of--a national perspective on a national problem. To get it, the Department of Transportation (DOT) should establish a permanent National Planning and Coordinating Division.

Toward Transport Integration

Surprisingly, many members of the aviation industry agree on the need for governmental control. Intensely competitive aviation leaders see that their ability to come up with a good product and sell it is being sabotaged on the ground. "For the first time in our history," says David S. Lewis, president of McDonnell Douglas, "we are inhibited by a systems problem." What is needed is a systems approach--a hard analysis of every factor bearing on airports, airways, air-traffic control, even the airframe industry. The new division's job would be to define the problems, weigh possible solutions, and pass along specific recommendations to DOT, Congress and business.

Equally urgent is the planning of a national, integrated transportation system. Most of the components exist: highways, railroads, waterways and airports. They have to be tied together, and efficiently coordinated. Big new airports should have runways specifically reserved for planes going to and coming from feeder airports. They should also connect with wide freeways, quick hydroplanes, efficient monorails and commuter railroad lines refurbished with the public weal in mind.

At present, it takes too long to convert to commercial uses the technical achievements of the military, NASA, and the Space Technology Laboratory. A new DOT planning division might assume this function and quickly adapt to civil aviation, say, the Air Force's new portable 65-Ib. instrument-landing system developed in Southeast Asia. Such equipment would increase the number of alternate fields easily available to a plane in trouble.

In short, a real planning effort would benefit and unify all transportation systems, but especially aviation. Without such firm national coordination, air travel is doomed to a succession of crises, each worse than the last. But why wait for the imperative of crisis? If all concerned, including the airlines, will only decide to act, the U.S. has both the means and the machinery necessary to attain the "magic" airborne ease of Tennyson's vision.

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