Beware: Jet Crossing

To Douglas Aircraft last week went a $30 million order from Northwest Airlines for five extra-long-range DC-8 jet transports, thus launching the last of the major U.S. airlines into the jet age. The announcement pushed total commercial jet orders to 262, but it brought no cheers from one important segment of the industry: the men who run the crowded U.S. airways. It was one more reminder that the jet age is practically upon them.

Production of Boeing's 707 jet transport is racing eight months ahead of schedule, and certification is going along so smoothly that the first planes will start hauling passengers barely four months from now. By the end of the year, American Airlines President C. R. Smith and Pan American Boss Juan T. Trippe plan to have eleven jets in the air. The trouble is that the U.S. airways are not--and will not be--ready to mix the 550-m.p.h. jets with 350-m.p.h. piston planes in real safety.

Spurred on by four mid-air collisions costing 126 lives so far in 1958, Congress last week was pushing hard on a bill setting up a Federal Aviation Agency to exercise almost total control over U.S. air space, bring both military and civilian craft under strict ground control. To operate the airways, the Civil Aeronautics Administration is spending $1 billion to replace the current hodgepodge control with a semiautomatic, radar-based system. The trouble with the plan is its target date: 1963. With a lead-time of 18 months or more for complex radars, CAA is still waiting for 70% of the control equipment ordered since 1956. To be really safe, say CAA men, 85% of the 100,000 U.S. planes now flying would have to be ordered out of the air until the whole new system is in operation.

Radar & Radio. The new airways-modernization plan envisions a network of aerial highways controlled by 100 huge radar scanners much like those at military DEW line stations. Forty such long-range (up to 200 miles) sets are scheduled to be in operation by July 1959, yet only 27 have been ordered and only one is in operation. The plan calls for 138 surveillance radars for close-in airport traffic control; only 45 are in operation now; another 16 are programed for early 1960. The plan also includes 23 precision-approach radars (ten now operating), 289 traffic-control radar beacons (none operating), 677 omnidirection radio units (VOR), 573 short-range navigation units (VORTAC), 235 instrument-landing systems and another 69 airport control towers.

To tie the entire system together, CAA plans a series of giant computers at major traffic centers to keep track of each plane, guide it safely along the airways. By mid-1959 CAA hopes to have computer centers at New York, Washington, Boston, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Chicago and Detroit, add new cities at the rate of six each year. But by next winter, when the first big jets start whistling along the already crowded airways, there will be only one computer operating for certain, and that one on an experimental basis in Indianapolis.

Stopgap Skyways. As a stopgap measure to reduce the collision danger, CAA last week laid out three transcontinental air lanes that are completely ground controlled. The new air lanes are 40 miles wide instead of the standard 20 miles, extend from 17,000 ft. to 22,000 ft.; all planes, both military and civilian, in the super-skyways will operate on instrument flight rules, fly at least ten minutes apart. Another five routes are under consideration. In addition, all airlines belonging to the Air Transport Association will fly on instrument rules above 10,000 ft., and military planes will operate on the same rules below 20,000 ft.

But, like all stopgaps, such measures are not fully effective. While they do put more planes under ground control, they also increase the strain on the already overworked CAA with its outmoded system. And the big jets will only increase the pressure. Said CAAdministrator James T. Pyle: "The public must realize that we cannot eliminate the collision hazard until we fully implement our Federal airways plan, and this is in the order of four years or more. We're not ready because people didn't start five or ten years ago to get ready."

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