Here Comes the Bus

A sort of jet plain Jane that goes by the name of air bus may soon become a hot new piece of airline equipment. The concept--a subsonic job with double the passenger capacity of jets currently flying short-and medium-range runs--has been in the talking stage in both the U.S. and Europe for over two years. Now Lockheed Aircraft Corp. plans a 600-m.p.h., $15.6 million model which, if it draws enough orders, could go into production as early as next spring.

Designated the L-1011, Lockheed's air bus is the second of two projects on which the company had been pinning its hopes for re-entry into the commercial airframe business, a field that it left (except for business jets) in 1962, when it rolled out the last of 170 turboprop Electras. The No. 1 target was the Government-supported program to build a U.S. supersonic transport. When its SST hopes crashed last

January (rival Boeing got the contract), the company immediately turned to the air bus. Seemingly unfazed by the $500 million development bill that Lockheed will have to foot on its own, Chairman Daniel J. Haughton is convinced that "this airplane will be a winner."

Physical & Economic. Though capable of transcontinental runs, the L-1011 is designed to shine on such medium-range (up to 2,000 miles), high-density hops as the rich New York-Miami run. With 227 to 300 passengers in a comfortable two-aisle layout (six abreast in first class, eight or nine in economy), it promises to whiz along for under 1-c- per passenger mile--less than any existing jet. That efficiency, and the fact that it can use runways too short for smaller, four-engine airliners, is the result of the plane's major technological advance: Lockheed will use three 33,000-lb.-thrust turbofan engines (two mounted under the wings and one in the tail) like the ones slated for its huge C-5A military transport.

Lockheed expects an 800-plane market for the air bus by 1980, on grounds that it will become a physical as well as economic necessity. Designed for the long haul, Douglas' 250-passenger "stretched" DC-8 and Boeing's upcoming 490-passenger 747 and SST will not even begin to handle all the future growth in air travel, which is expected to more than double in eight years. Flocks of smaller, short-haul planes are even now jamming air corridors and ground terminals. Reflecting the desire of many airlines for more seats but fewer planes is the fact that Boeing's ubiquitous 131-passenger 727, in service for only three years, is being expanded to a 180-seat version. "Without the air bus," says Lockheed Project Chief Robert A. Bailey, "you'd have an all-aluminum overcast by 1975 on major U.S. routes."

Lockheed was by no means first to see the silver lining in that vision. European airlines began calling for an air bus back in 1963, and the British, French and German governments got an aircraft-manufacturing consortium together to cash in on the demand. Their early lead disappeared as the partners fell to feuding. They also suffered a rude shock when American Airlines Chairman C. R. Smith allowed as how he would have none of a twin-jet design, considered anything less than three engines in a 300-passenger plane foolhardy for safety reasons.

The Europeans may end up in the back of the bus altogether. Other U.S. companies are stirring with plans--Boeing with a 757, McDonnell Douglas a DC-10. And last week, while Lockheed was getting word around that the L-1011 could be in service in 1972, the European troika was bucking along as usual. Scheduled to join its partners in signing a long-delayed agreement to start talking specifications, France abruptly demurred, demanding more time for study. Such time-outs pretty much assure that the Europeans will not get into the game until 1973 at the earliest.

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