Aviation: Douglas’ New Plane

A new era in commercial aviation flew into being last week on Delta Air Lines’ Flight 529 from Atlanta to Memphis and Kansas City. The plane that made the flight was Douglas’ new, short-range DC-9 jet, flying its first commercial schedule. The DC-9 not only starts the process of bringing swift jet service to hundreds of U.S. cities too small for big, long-range planes, but may also prove to be one of the most efficient planes in the air.

The twinjet, 560-m.p.h. plane can land on a 4,250-ft. runway (v. about 7,000 ft. for a Boeing 707 or a DC-8), costs about $1 a mile to operate (less than half the cost of a DC-8) and can make money carrying as few as 23 passengers. It is equipped with its own boarding stairs, ground air conditioning and jet starting units, thus keeps intermediate stops short. It can carry between 56 and 90 passengers (a new series to be built in 1966 will carry 115) and 600 cu. ft. of cargo, has a range of 1,500 miles.

For Douglas, whose prop-driven DC-3s, DC-6s and DC-7s ruled the airways for two decades, the DC-9 represents a major comeback. The firm got badly beaten by Boeing in developing and selling the first generation of long-range jets, has sold only 323 DC-8s v. 1,029 707s, 720s and medium-range 727s sold by Boeing. While Boeing was raking in its 707 sales, Douglas saw a vast demand for smaller jets to replace the aging prop planes still working on short hops, gambled that it could come up with a better plane faster than anyone else. Though it did not have a single order when it began, it won its gamble; Boeing’s short-range 737 may not fly commercially until late 1967.

So far, 24 airlines have bought 230 of the DC-9s, taken options for 144 more (the plane’s average cost: $3,500,000). Douglas estimates its break-even point at between 200 and 400 aircraft, thus may be in the unprecedented position of having broken even on an airplane before it flew. “This plane will be similar to the DC-3 for us,” says Douglas Group Vice President Jackson McGowen, referring to the two-motored, 30-passenger plane that was the mainstay of commercial aviation from 1936 to 1947. “With the continuing market we foresee, it should give Douglas considerable stability all through the 1970s.” Last week Douglas officials doubled their estimate of the world market for short-range jets to 2,000 in the next decade, predicted that the DC-9 would capture 40% of it.