Will Plan for Super Jumbo Jet Take Off?

Today’s jumbo jetliner stretches more than 200 feet, stands six stories high at the tail, and typically carries 350 people. And anyone who has flown these technological marvels knows they involve waiting--lots of it.

If you loathe that downtime at check-in, boarding, the luggage carousel and customs, brace yourself: Airplane builders are developing jetliners that in a few years will carry 550 people. Or 650. Or maybe 800.

They are dubbed “super jumbo jets,” and they will be “bigger than anything we have today,” said Boeing Co. Chairman Philip Condit, referring to Boeing’s venerable 747 jumbo jet.

The super jumbos being quietly designed by Boeing in Seattle and by its rival Airbus Industrie at its home in Toulouse, France, portend a new era in commercial aviation.

Just as passenger air travel was dramatically altered by the leaps from propeller planes to jets, and from jets to jumbo jets, so too will it undergo another huge change with the super jumbo.

To be sure, you won’t fly one from, say, here to Detroit, or other domestic destinations. Today’s jets can handle that traffic. Super jumbos, which are 20% to 25% bigger than a 747, will be devoted to heavily traveled transoceanic routes.

Even so, the gargantuan planes--besides raising the social and aesthetic questions of whether people want to travel with 550 others--pose a raft of problems involving airport congestion and passenger safety. And that’s assuming airports will spend the huge sums needed just to handle the planes and their passengers.

“My first thought when I heard about these planes was, ‘My God, what are the logistics of this?’ ” said Dennis Hitchcock, an airline specialist at the International Assn. of Machinists and Aerospace Workers, the union that represents many of the industry’s ramp workers and baggage handlers.

No matter. The super jumbos are being developed because worldwide passenger air traffic is expected to more than double in the next 20 years, far outpacing airports’ current capacity.

The increase is being led by surging growth on routes serving Asia, which is being fueled not only by population gains but also by the boom in transpacific trade that is increasing the droves of business people buying seats on airplanes.

“There are certain routes in the world where having a very long-range, ultra-high-capacity airplane really does make sense,” said Waseem Sheikh, an aerospace manager at the consulting firm A. T. Kearney.

Airbus plans a new full-length, double-deck super jumbo, with one level of 300 people stacked atop another in a three-class layout, or 400 on each level on an all-economy flight.

Boeing’s versions of a super jumbo, designed to seat 500 or more, involve stretching both decks of the 747. (The 747 now has a partial upper deck that creates the plane’s signature humpback fuselage.)

Rolls-Royce and other jet engine builders also are racing to design engines powerful enough to lift the super jumbos.

But will these behemoths be accommodated by the world’s airports, sanctioned by its safety regulators and accepted by the public?

In the aftermath of two U.S. airline disasters this year--including the recent explosion of a Trans World Airlines 747 jumbo jet near New York that killed 230 people--the super jumbos also escalate public concerns about safety.

If just one super jumbo crashed and all aboard were killed, would the public be so appalled at the carnage that the plane would be banished, wiping out the airplane makers’ multibillion-dollar investments in the aircraft?

“That is always a concern if you transport a large number of passengers,” said Juergen Thomas, Airbus’ senior vice president in charge of its super jumbo effort.

Susan Rutledge of Phoenix was more blunt. “It’s too many people,” she said as she waited for a flight at Los Angeles International Airport. “If there is an accident, it would be a big loss of life.”

Or, if there was a chance for passengers to survive a crash, would their escape be compromised by having so many more people aboard? After all, U.S. regulations require a jetliner to be evacuated in an emergency in just 90 seconds--even a 747.

Consider: If you had to suddenly be evacuated from the upper deck of a super jumbo, it would mean hopping on an inflatable slide at a height of nearly four stories, perhaps from a cabin filled with smoke.

“No one has ever successfully evacuated a full-length, double-deck [jet] before, and that is a long way down” from the upper deck, said Jeff Verwey, a chief engineer on Boeing’s large aircraft designs. “We did a number of tests . . . that’s really daunting to look down at 40 feet of slide [at a] 45-degree angle.”

But Airbus’ Thomas said the super jumbos will meet the law for safe evacuations. “We are working with slide manufacturers and solutions have been proposed,” he said.

Then there are other problems that, if more mundane, must still be solved before the super jumbos can fly.

They are too big to taxi around most airports, or to park at their gates, so airports would have to build structures to handle them. But will those costs contribute to higher airline fares?

The Airports Council International, a trade group for airports, recently surveyed 32 of its members and found each would have to spend more than $100 million to modify their runways and passenger terminals for the big jets.

Also, will it mean longer waits at the airport and on the airplanes that passengers won’t tolerate?

“In any airport, moving 600 people off an airplane, through customs and everything else, will be a huge task,” said John J. Driscoll, executive vice president of the Los Angeles Department of Airports. “The level of discomfort [for passengers], until new facilities are built, will be there.”

Regardless, Airbus and Boeing are pressing ahead because of their fierce competition to get the lion’s share of that expected leap in passenger traffic over the next two decades. Airbus especially wants to develop a super jumbo because it does not currently sell an airplane that is even as big as the 747.

And several airlines are looking closely at buying super jumbos, including U.S. carriers United and Northwest, Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific Airways, Japan Air Lines, Singapore Airlines and British Airways.

The airlines have their own set of demands for the super jumbos. Among them: The “turnaround” time of a super jumbo--the time it takes to refuel, clean and restock the jet and put it back in the sky--must be no longer than it now takes for a 747. That’s about 100 minutes.

If they do eventually fly super jumbos, the airlines will also discreetly divide the seating arrangements into sections “so passengers wouldn’t look like they were in these huge, voluminous hangars,” said Brian Kay, Los Angeles services manager for Cathay Pacific.

“You don’t want to look ahead and see 500 people in front of you,” he said.

But experts agree that the world’s airports will determine whether the super jumbo flies. The super jumbo “means most airports have to change to adapt to it, and that’s not a slam-dunk,” Condit said.

When Boeing approached the airports about such an aircraft, “their first reaction was one of near panic” at the necessary changes, Verwey said. “But once they started taking a look at it, it wasn’t as bad in most cases” as they had feared.

Rod Muddle, fleet planning manager for British Airways, asserted that big international airports will be eager to embrace the super jumbos. “They make money based on the number of passengers they serve. . . . They will be motivated to make the necessary changes,” he said.

Some already are. Developers planning the new $9-billion Chek Lap Kok Airport in Hong Kong recently included a second runway and passenger terminal changes to handle the enormous jets.

The plane makers and airlines also say that because of surging passenger traffic, airports will be forced to spend considerable sums for expansion whether the super jumbo is introduced or not.

Indeed, other gateway airports such as LAX, Heathrow in London and Narita in Tokyo are bursting at the seams now. During a recent stop at Narita, Condit said, he looked out at one runway and counted 67 of his company’s 747 jumbo jets.

“The only way you’re going to get more ‘throughput’ through that airport is with bigger airplanes,” he said.

LAX could handle a stretched 747 today, but the plane would be too big to lumber up to a terminal gate, and its passengers would have to take a bus to the terminal from a remote landing site at the airport, Driscoll said.

But as part of its 20-year master plan, LAX expects to build a terminal for super jumbos, though not for several years, he said.

Though exact figures are not available, a super jumbo is expected to cost somewhat more than today’s 747, which sells for $150 million to $180 million, depending on the plane’s seating layout and other options.

But Gerald Greenwald, chairman of United Airlines, said United and other carriers are demanding that the bigger planes cost no more to operate on a per-seat basis than today’s jets, so that the airlines can afford to help pay for the airports’ modifications and to curb the need for fare increases.

Boeing once considered building an all-new super jumbo design. But it now believes that it could not sell enough of the planes to turn a reasonable profit on the $8-billion investment such a new plane would require.

So Boeing opted to stretch out its existing 747--a program that will still cost about $4 billion to develop--which Boeing says should also mitigate the logistic problems for the airports.

“Yes, there will be 20% more people to get off” the aircraft, Condit said. But he added: “I think the added complication of trying to handle that airplane will be relatively minor.”

Ironically, Boeing and the 747 had to overcome many of these same questions when the 747 arrived in 1970. The 747 radically increased the number of passengers that could fly in one aircraft, and its arrival incited a variety of fears.

One newspaper account fretted about the prospect of “in-flight disturbances” with so many people sitting in a sealed-up plane. Another worried about “chaotic conditions” when 747s landed at smaller airports.

Evacuating hundreds of people from a 747 in an emergency also was a big concern. The Federal Aviation Administration withheld the 747’s certification because the plane’s emergency slide chutes initially were not up to the task.

The problems were eventually fixed, and Boeing has gone on to sell more than 1,000 of the airplanes. The program even survived the horrific 1977 crash of two 747s on a runway in the Canary Islands that killed 582 people--the worst aviation disaster in history.

Even so, no one knows how the public will accept flying on super jumbo jets.

“There always is the issue, from a passenger standpoint, of just how many of my close friends do I really want to travel with?” Condit said. “And how long do I have to wait to get my bag?”

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Thinking Big

The “superjumbo” jets planned for the future would dwarf most of today’s airliners. Here’s a comparison of Airbus Industrie’s proposed giant plane, the A3XX-200, and the mid-size Boeing Co. 757-200, in service today:

*--*

AIRBUS A3XX-200 BOEING 757-200 Length 254 feet 155 feet Wingspan 259 feet 125 feet Tail height 80 feet 44 1/2 feet Seating* 656 people 194 people Engines 4 2 Maximum takeoff weight (pounds) 1.3 million 220,000

*--*

* In typical three-class configuration.

Sources: Airbus Industrie, Boeing Co.