--- description: At California's Oxnard Airport one afternoon last week, Pilot Walt Davidson clambered into a two-engine plane which had a curious, U-shaped bend in each wing. He started it down the runway and,... title: AVIATION: The Channel Wing image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- * [U.S.](/section/us/) # AVIATION: The Channel Wing by [TIME](/author/time/) Jul 27, 1953 4:00 AM CUT by [TIME](/author/time/) Jul 27, 1953 4:00 AM CUT At California’s Oxnard Airport one afternoon last week, Pilot Walt Davidson clambered into a two-engine plane which had a curious, U-shaped bend in each wing. He started it down the runway and, after a run of only 90 ft., the plane soared into the air at 30 m.p.h. Davidson climbed to 1,000 ft., then circled the airport for four minutes before coming in for a bouncy landing at 40 m.p.h. For Inventor Willard Custer, 54, the test flight of his “channel-wing” aircraft † (TIME, Dec. 17, 1951) proved that it could take off in an incredibly short run. Eventually he hopes to show that it will take off at 15 m.p.h. inside 25 ft., hover motionless at a 23° angle and land within 25 ft. Custer, who has spent 20 years perfecting his plane, plans to sell a two-engine, five-passenger version for $75,000. † Which gets its quick-lifting power from the U-shaped bands which function on the principle of the Venturi tube, i.e., the faster air flows through a tube with a narrow throat and flaring ends, the lower the pressure drops within the tube. On the plane, the lowered pressure causes a suction, even at low speeds, within the channel’s, maintaining the flow of air and preserving lift under conditions that would stall an ordinary plane. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6869232/aviation-the-channel-wing/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/6869232/aviation-the-channel-wing/"},"headline":"AVIATION: The Channel Wing","datePublished":"1953-07-27T04:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-03-13T21:00:02.984Z","description":"At California's Oxnard Airport one afternoon last week, Pilot Walt Davidson clambered into a two-engine plane which had a curious, U-shaped bend in each wing. He started it down the runway and,...","url":"https://time.com/archive/6869232/aviation-the-channel-wing/","keywords":[],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"TIME","url":"https://time.com/author/time/"}],"articleSection":"U.S.","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/us/","name":"U.S."}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/archive/6869232/aviation-the-channel-wing/","name":"AVIATION: The Channel Wing"}}]}] ```