La Jetée Press

12/28/2024

12/15/2024

12/10/2024

This NAMC ad for the YS-11 is from around 1960 prior to the type's maiden flight in 1962.

The YS-11 name comes from the Japanese word for transport (yusō) and design (sekkei). The first 1 in the 11 refers to the engine candidates considered, the Rolls-Royce Dart turboprop had been designated "Number 1" in the design phase.

The second 1 in the 11 refers to the aircraft specification plan used, "Plan 1". Various configurations were examined during the design phase, there was even a "Plan 0".

In the run up to the public unveiling, a catchphrase was used “Let’s meet on the 11th at Sugita in Yokohama.” The marketing cemented the type as the YS-"Eleven" even though to those involved in the design, it was YS-One-One (YS ichi ichi in Japanese).

12/08/2024

This Boeing advertisement for the 737-300 is from 1984 and features the chairman and president of USAir, Ed Colodny, and the chairman and president of Southwest Airlines, Herb Kelleher.

Both USAir and Southwest were the launch customers of the Boeing 737-300 with their orders placed in March 1981.

While Herb Kelleher's story is well known, Colodny is just as distinguished. From Burlington, VT and a graduated of Harvard Law, Colodny worked with the Civil Aeronautics board before joining Allegheny in 1957. He rose through the ranks to eventual lead the airline from 1975-1991. Allegheny rebranded as USAir in 1979 with deregulation.

12/08/2024

There's whole levels of snazzy here you just can't deny.

09/03/2024

Northwest Orient's acquisition rationale for the Boeing 727-100 and Boeing 727-200 were slightly different. The 727-100s came first at the airline as a supplement and then outright replacement for the Lockheed Electra on domestic short-medium haul routes. With its shared features (like engines) with Northwest's 707/720B fleet, the aircraft was popular.

When Boeing came knocking in Minneapolis with the Boeing 727-200, the airline was a ready customer but would use the 727-200 replace the Boeing 707 and 720B on domestic routes. With a similar payload but with three engines and commonality with the 727-100 fleet, Boeing didn't have to try to hard to see the -200.

The first Northwest 727-200s were delivered in 1968 and the type served until 2003.

09/02/2024

The Red Arrows opened their demonstration routine yesterday by overflying the waterfront crowd from behind trailing red, white, and blue smoke. It was quite striking!

The Canadian International Air Show did not disappoint. Not only is it the 100th anniversary of the Royal Canadian Air Force, it’s also the 60th anniversary of the Red Arrows **and** the 75th anniversary of the CIAS, the longest running air show in North America.

The Red Arrows at the Royal Air Force’s demonstration team and the crossed the Atlantic from the UK a few weeks ago to begin their Canadian tour “Exercise Maple Hawk” as part of the commemorations of the Royal Canadian Air Force’s centennial.

Many in the US don’t realize that at the end of the Second World War, the Royal Canadian Air Force was the fourth largest air force in the world in terms of personnel, a remarkable contribution to the war effort given that Canada’s population was only 12 million people in 1945.

09/01/2024

This 1954 Avro Canada advertisement shows cases not just the CF-100 Canuck interceptor, but also the three radar chains that stretched across the North American continent mostly in Canada to warn of a Soviet bomber attack.

The southernmost chain was the Pinetree Line, construction of which began in 1951. Some Pinetree stations were active into the early 90s.

Construction of the Mid-Canada Line or McGill Fence began in 1956, but its radars were plagued with false alerts from birds to general aviation aircraft. Frustrated with the system, Canada shut down the MCL in 1965. The transition of the Soviet threat from bombers to ICBMs accelerated the shut down.

The northernmost line in this ad represents the Distant Early Warning (DEW) Line. Work on the DEW Line began in 1954 with improved radars over the other two radar fences. Select DEW Line stations became the North Warning System in 1988 and still operate to this day, though a resurgent Russia under Vladimir Putin has Canadian and American defense planners mulling modernization of the DEW Line to detect hypersonic weapons.

08/31/2024

This is the cover of a 1975 issue of Air International that focused on variable-geometry aircraft. Swing wings were the design rage aviation in the 1960s and 1970s, but they proved to be heavy (the redesign of the Boeing 2707 SST from a swing wing to a tailed delta is one vivid example) and were ultimately made obsolete by advances in computerized flight control systems that allowed things like relaxed static stability.

This cover depicts the Bell X-5, the Grumman XF10F Jaguar, the Rockwell B-1A, the Mikoyan Gurevich MiG-23 "Flogger", the Panavia Tornado IDS, and a piston design I haven't been able to identify yet. I'll open this to the more knowledgeable followers of this page as to the identity of that aircraft.

08/18/2024

This was the cover from American Airlines' inflight magazine on September 1971.

American launched DC-10 services on 5 August 1971 with service between Los Angeles and Chicago O'Hare.

With airlines ordering the Boeing 747 in the mid-1960s, American Airlines' VP of development engineering, Frank Kolk, cautioned C.R. Smith that the 747 was too big for just about anyone's airline network, American included. But American's transcon 707 services had the highest load factors in the network, so the 747 was ordered, but Smith encouraged Kolk to talk to manufacturers about a smaller widebody jet.

Lockheed was most receptive and created a twin-engine widebody that could operate out of La Guardia, but other airlines didn't like two engines, they wanted at least three engines. With American overruled, Lockheed began work on the Tristar.

Douglas, invigorated after the merger with McDonnell, set about work on Kolk's specification but knowing that everyone else wanted three engines rather than two that American desired, pushed ahead for the DC-10 as a trijet.

American was now looking at two very similar designs. The airline liked the RB.211 engine and its three-shaft technology, but it was too short for DC-10's tail nacelle. American's engineering staff preferred the DC-10, but C.R. Smith preferred the Tristar. But he wasn't at the helm any longer as George Spater took the reins at American and it was his call to make.

Spater asked if Douglas could redesign the DC-10 for the RB.211 engine, but since American was the only airline interested in an RB.211 DC-10, no guarantees were offered.

Many assumed American would follow Delta, Eastern and TWA in ordering the Tristar, but when United broke ranks and ordered the DC-10, it gave George Spater comfort in going ahead with ordering the DC-10 for American Airlines.

08/17/2024

This is the cover from a promotional brochure introducing the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 to United's revenue services in 1971.

With Lockheed developing the L-1011 Tristar at the same time as the DC-10, there was a growing consensus in the late 1960s among the US airlines that the market couldn't support two competing widebody trijet designs. American Airlines president George Spater even had discussions with the other airline presidents about settling on a single type.

Analysts crunching the numbers at the potential customer airlines felt that two competing trijet widebodies on the market would ultimately be detrimental to both Lockheed and McDonnell Douglas.

When Delta, Eastern and TWA ordered the Lockheed Tristar, everyone assumed that American and United would follow suit. United, however, was dead set against getting a British engine (the Rolls Royce RB.211 on the Tristar) and broke ranks to get the DC-10 with American Airlines quickly following suit.

It was a toss up if American would have committed to the DC-10 on its own as C.R. Smith liked the Tristar but felt it was George Spater's call to make. United's engineers liked the General Electric CF6 engine as it was less risky than the three-shaft RB.211.

08/16/2024

Following up on yesterday's post about the USAF Handley Page C-10A Jetstream that was canceled, this is the wonderful box art done by Roy Cross for the Airfix 1:72 scale kit when it was first released in 1969. Roy Cross had done many paintings used as box art for Airfix 1964-1974.

The USAF had planned to use the C-10A Jetstream as a personnel transport, seating up to 12 passengers but it could also take 6 stretcher cases in the medevac role. Beechcraft would have marketed the type for the civilian market in the United States as the Beech Model 115 which is a bit ironic as it sat in the same class as the King Air series.

The switch to the Garrett engines from the Astazou engines improved its performance and would have been marketed as the "Jetstream 3M".

08/15/2024

This Handley Page ad from 1969 shows a Garrett-engined Jetstream in USAF colors. The USAF had 15 on order which would have been designated C-10A.

The USAF order was unusual for the period but it was part of an industrial offset for the UK's order for the F-111 (the British variant was the F-111K). As part of the UK order, the US DoD committed to spend $400 million on British defense products.

The Jetstream was part of that offset- also included were HUDs from Elliott Flight Automation (Elliott HUDs were used on the A-7 Corsair) as well as Allison's TF41 turbofan engine which was a Rolls Royce Spey derivative.

When the F-111K was canceled, the Jetstream was on the chopping block, but the DoD ran an official tender for the specification that would have been met by the C-10A- that tender was won by the Beech King Air. Three C-10s were built but never flown and 12 were in various stages of completion when it was canceled.

The C-10 designation would be reused for the McDonnell Douglas KC-10A Extender.

08/14/2024

This 1971 McDonnell Douglas ad is titled "The Balkenkreuz for the Phantom", the "balkankreuz" being the Luftwaffe insignia.

That's not an F-4E, but rather the RF-4E. Before the Luftwaffe operated its customized fighter variant of the Phantom, the F-4F, it began operating the RF-4E in 1971 as a replacement for its aging RF-104 Starfighter fleet which lacked all-weather capabilities in the wake of NATO's 1967 flexible response doctrine.

The F-4F did not arrive until 1974, it was essentially an F-4E without BVR and air to ground missile capability. As it was lighter than the F-4E, it was the most maneuverable of the Phantom variants and was procured initially as an interim type to replace the F-104G and Fiat G.91.

08/13/2024

On 3 June 1970, Air France became the sixth airline in the world to inaugurate Boeing 747 services with a Paris Orly flight bound for New York JFK. Pan Am was the first, followed by TWA, American, Lufthansa and Alitalia. It was only ten years earlier that Air France launched its 707 services.

F-BPVA was the first to arrive, delivered on 20 March 1970 followed by F-BPVB five days later.

The GE CF6-powered 747-200s began arriving in 1974. This is the cover from promotional inflight material that Air France released in 1979.

Air France would operate 74 "Jumbo Jets" in its history, one of the larger 747 fleets of the world, with the final Air France 747 flight in 2016, a 747-400 operating from Mexico City to Paris Charles de Gaulle.

08/12/2024

With last night being the closing ceremonies of the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics, how about some French content?

This striking artwork adorned the cover of Concorde promotional booklets released by Air France in 1975 just prior to the aircraft entering service with the airline in 1976. Inaugural Air France Concorde services began 21 January 1976 Paris CDG-Rio de Janeiro via Dakar.

Air France operated up to seven Concordes 1976-2003 with one hull loss in 2000 and one scrapped in 1994.

08/11/2024

In 1985, Embraer began work on a 19-seat successor to the EMB-110 Bandeirante which first flew in 1968. To encourage economic partnership in the Mercosur economic bloc, Embraer joined with FMA of Argentina to develop the CBA-123 Vector as an advanced turboprop airliner.

Using a shortened Brasilia fuselage, the Vector had aft mounted pusher Garrett TPE351 turboprop engines, an evolved version of the same engines used on the Metro. The Vector also had a supercritical straight wing, one of Embraer's most advanced to date.

The Vector made its first flight 18 July 1990 and was demonstrated at Farnborough that year, gaining 130 MoUs from potential customers. Embraer planned the Vector to complement its upcoming regional jet design, the ERJ-145. Unfortunately, the advanced technology in the Vector made it more expensive than planned and the core market for the Vector, the regional airlines of the US, expressed a desire for a larger aircraft bigger than the Brasilia to compete with the upcoming CRJ.

Embraer's leadership wanted to postpone the ERJ-145 and refine the Vector further to lower its price, but Embraer's US team convinced the company that the US market would be more interested in the ERJ-145 than the Vector. With political uncertainty in Brazil with the impeachment of President Collor de Mello, the aircraft was canceled.

Two prototypes were built (one was tested with winglets), the third aircraft was 80% complete at the time.

All was not lost. What Embraer learned with the Vector benefitted the ERJ-145 program. Though a promising aircraft, the Vector's legacy was that is showed the world what Embraer was capable of doing and led to refinements to the ERJ-145. Embraer had started building landing gear doors for the 747 and was building the flaps for the MD-11.

Images: AWST, Embraer