C-17’s Maiden Flight May End Southland Era

In what could be the last maiden flight of a big jet out of the Los Angeles Basin, the McDonnell Douglas C-17 cargo plane took off into a hazy blue sky over Long Beach on Sunday afternoon and landed more than two hours later at Edwards Air Force Base.

The flight provided a huge boost to the morale of workers at Douglas Aircraft, who have endured a number of setbacks and stinging political controversy in the $35-billion Air Force program.

McDonnell, which began development of the aircraft in 1985, is one year late in achieving Sunday’s C-17 flight and is facing an estimated cost overrun of $700 million, according to the Air Force. But the company disputes the estimate and others that are much higher, insisting it will not lose money.

But on Sunday, accounting disagreements took a back seat.

Painted in camouflage green, the massive jet flew over throngs of McDonnell workers, who rimmed the Long Beach Airport and let out hoots and cheers as the noisy four-engine aircraft flew toward the ocean for a check of its airworthiness.

“I played a small part in this, but I can still take some pride,” said McDonnell flight test engineer Doug Meyer, who tirelessly waited both Saturday and Sunday through many delays that affected the flight. “I spent my last three years working on this.”

The first flight of the C-17 may also mark an important historic juncture for the Southern California aircraft industry because the outlook for production of future aircraft of its size being produced here is uncertain.

McDonnell has said it will build a new plant in another state for its next big jet, the MD-12 passenger jetliner. Although it could eventually build big jets here again, the new plant would presumably be the site for later big jets.

The aircraft industry began producing in the Los Angeles Basin in 1909, when Glenn Martin built his first biplane in an abandoned Methodist church in Santa Ana. Later, Donald Douglas, the founder of Douglas Aircraft, migrated to the Los Angeles Basin, drawn by weather ideal for flying.

It was that sort of day Sunday. The C-17 aircraft carried a crew of four, three McDonnell employees and an Air Force officer. Although the flight was not considered hazardous compared to first flights of single-engine fighters, the crew wore parachutes and would have jumped down an escape hatch just aft of the cockpit in an emergency.

The C-17 is the Air Force’s first newly designed cargo jet since the Lockheed C-5A flew in 1968. The cargo carrier is supposed to allow the Air Force to fly troops and equipment directly to the front lines of battle, landing in short, unimproved airfields.

The program has strong backing within the Air Force and Army, though critics assert that McDonnell will not come close to meeting its original specifications for the aircraft’s cargo capacity and range. After several reductions in the original specifications, the aircraft is now supposed to carry 160,000 pounds over a distance of 2,400 miles.

McDonnell struggled to contain the weight of the aircraft, which is a common Achilles heel in the design and production of new planes. In addition, the C-17 is one of the most computer-intensive of big transport aircraft, which posed another big challenge. By Sunday’s flight, 80% of the software for the aircraft’s computers was completed, however.

Investors have fretted over the potential C-17 losses facing McDonnell, but the company insists its worst financial problems are over.

“We have taken aggressive action over the last 12 months to cut costs,” said Douglas program manager David Swain. But cost analysis experts in the Pentagon recently projected that the company would lose $1.4 billion to $2.6 billion on its current contracts, estimates that drew the ire of company executives.

For its first flight, the aircraft carried just 30,000 pounds of cement on loading pallets, which was ballast necessary to ensure that the empty aircraft was properly balanced.

The Pratt & Whitney engines, each producing 41,700 pounds of thrust, revved up for 15 seconds before the aircraft began to roll down the runway headed southeast toward Seal Beach. Accelerating quickly for such a big aircraft, it was airborne 20 seconds later. The aircraft lifted off the ground at an estimated speed of 136 m.p.h.

Brig. Gen. Kenneth G. Miller, the Air Force’s program manager for the C-17, extolled the raw power of the aircraft in recent taxi tests, noting that he attempted to keep up with the jet in a Chevrolet station wagon equipped with a V-8 engine, but was passed by the aircraft after only a few seconds.

“It left us in the dust,” Miller remarked.

Immediately after the wheels left the ground, the ownership of the aircraft was legally transferred from McDonnell to the Air Force. Company executives and Air Force officials signed a document, known as a DD-250, which was the military’s official acceptance of the aircraft.

The aircraft then flew south to San Clemente Island and north to the Navy station at Point Mugu. It landed at Edwards Air Force Base, where it will begin a two-year test program that will eventually involve four other C-17 aircraft.

Although the C-17 may not boast revolutionary technology, it has a number of innovative features. The aircraft is the first U. S. transport airplane to use a fly-by-wire system, in which control surfaces, such as flaps on the wings, are operated electrically rather than hydraulically. Some European manufacturers have been quicker to adapt these systems, but U. S. firms have exercised greater caution.

The most significant innovation on the C-17 is a system that allows the aircraft to land on runways as short as 3,000 feet. The exhaust from the engines is blown over the flaps, creating additional lift that allows the aircraft to approach the runway at much steeper angles and stop more quickly.

The aircraft has a wingspan of 165 feet and a fuselage length of 174 feet. Its tail rises to 55.1 feet. It weighed about 420,000 pounds at Sunday’s takeoff.

About 7,000 workers at Douglas Aircraft work on the C-17 in Long Beach, where the aircraft is assembled in a giant 1.1-million-square-foot hangar, adorned with the sign “Home of the USAF C-17.” About 3,000 other McDonnell workers on the C-17 are located in Torrance, Carson, St. Louis, Mo.; Columbus, Ohio; and Macon, Ga.

Lockheed last year announced that it would leave Burbank, where it built the Navy P-3 Orion aircraft and earlier passenger jets. Rockwell International long ago stopped producing complete aircraft at its North American unit in El Segundo and is attempting to sell part of the site. Northrop no longer builds complete aircraft at its Hawthorne facilities.

The final assembly sites for Lockheed, Rockwell and Northrop have been transferred to Palmdale. But the entire military aircraft industry is reeling from the sharp cutbacks in federal budgets and the bleak outlook for the 1990s.