Local Issue; 27; Jet Age, Jet Problems

This is O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, the world's busiest airport. On an average day and good weather, O'Hare will handle 1,800 takeoffs and landings, one every 42 seconds. O'Hare is typical of the international airports of the world, handling both local and overseas traffic. Chicago's O'Hare also typifies many of the problems that all metropolitan areas will be facing in the next few years. The lines are not necessarily longer than before, there just seem to be more of them. The staggering figures of arrivals and departures are simply reflections of the air transportation facts of life. The airlines with increasing vigor and inventiveness are continually trying to attract new customers and, as they do, they accommodate the rising passenger volumes by putting more equipment in the air and by employing more people than ever before.

As a result, there are more planes flying, they are generally larger, and they fly more people, more miles, and increasingly faster speeds. At the same time, the veteran air traveler, with 10 or 15 or 20 years of commercial flying behind him, has come to expect a red carpet kind of treatment. Both this veteran and the newcomer to air travel receive improved customer service on the planes, but when they arrive at their destination, both sometimes feel their victims of the old American numbers game. Baggage handling, particularly for the inbound passenger, varies from virtual instant service on one airline to business as usual at another, where the weight often seems to be longer than it ever was. For the beginning traveler, the inevitable delays can be part of the excitement of jet travel. For the veteran of hundreds of thousands of air miles, a jostling weight for his luggage in the midst of 200 people is hardly exciting.

Many remember the good old days when the flying time was longer, but the number of co-passengers was very noticeably smaller. In the next 30 minutes, we'll examine many of the problems of the jet age and their proposed solutions, as WTTW Chicago presents local issue, jet age, jet problems. I'm Jack Maidly, WTTW in Chicago. In 1959, when O'Hare International Airport was being planned, it was expected that traffic would gradually increase to the point where approximately 25 million passengers would be arriving or departing on a yearly basis. In 1959, the planner speculated that it would be 1975 when that many passengers used the O'Hare facilities. In fact, it worked out something like this. In 1962, there were 13 and a half million arrivals in departures. In 1966, the number of incoming and outgoing passengers had increased to 23 and a half million.

In 1967, it will pass the 26 million mark. A million more passengers in 1967 than the planners had estimated for 1975. 26 million passengers a year breaks down to an approximate average of 75,000 people using the O'Hare facilities each day, or roughly 525,000 passengers each week. Perhaps that number of passengers becomes a little more personal. If you think of them in terms of consuming each week, 110,000 cups of coffee, 12,000 hamburgers, and 85,000 soft drinks. Incredibly, 300 dozen donuts and 300 dozen sweet rolls are baked on the premises each day. The experts fail that by 1969, O'Hare will be functioning at absolutely top capacity for its present facilities, and that by 1975, there will have to be another major airport

of jet age proportions to handle a traffic for metropolitan Chicago. On this point, legislators, city officials, airline representatives, the pilots, the FAA traffic control people, in short, everyone with a stake in Chicago aviation agrees. Charles Ruby flew for national airlines for 27 years and was their chief pilot before his election as president of the Airline Pilots Association. Democratic Congressman Roman Puchinsky represents the 11th congressional district of Illinois. We now have to have a third airfield if a Chicago has to remain the air hub of the world. The more important it would have provided the facilities for connecting flights. Robert Sampson is the regional vice president in charge of property for United Airlines. Are we in United Airlines to felt for some time that the third major airport to serve

the Chicago metropolitan area was a definite need? This is Harvey Foster, regional vice president for American Airlines. American Airlines feels that there is a definite need for our third airport within the very near future. But there isn't any doubt in anyone's mind today that Chicago needs another major airport. I mean the size and the passenger handling ability that our airfield has. Another one just with the same capacity. Pat Dunn has been managing Chicago's all-hair with professional expertise and cargyality since it opened formally in 1962. By his own admission, he is an optimist, while he's also realistic. We talked at length about aviation and airports of the present and the future, and he told us things like this. An airport can be over-built, it can be made so big, delays are built in. There's a limit to the number of usable runways, the amount of plane traffic that can be controlled,

the amount of snow removal and maintenance that can be carried out, the number of passengers that can be handled. But how close the capacity is our hair right now? Well, that's a question that could be answered in one word or 5,000, but I'd say that we could be comfortable here for a couple of more years. But we have a potential hair that we could exercise that would even make us probably stretch it for a year or two longer beyond that. But there are plenty of things that would have to be done in order to reach that comfortable area that I talk about. And you have a new control tower going up, and we control tower right across the street where they're doing their primary work, and now there's due to be completed a year from now until I-68, the construction will be completed, it probably would not be commissioned for another 120 days after that, because all the equipment will have to be thoroughly tested in the new equipment before we decommission the old tower, which is in the D-finger as

you know. Pat Don is set of air transportation. It isn't worth a damn until you buckle yourself into the seat on the airplane, and he's out to improve that situation the best he knows how. In addition to the parking lot and the 200-foot 20-story FAA control tower, O'Hare has spaced to build two additional runways, and plans are being made for at least one additional terminal concourse, as well as modification of some of the present loading ramps to accommodate the jet planes of the future. The expansion of O'Hare will solve some of the problems that will occur between now and the completion of that additional airport in 1975. There is an additional interim solution available to Chicago that is not available to other cities sharing the problems of jet-age transport. O'Hare's predecessor, as the world's busiest airport, was Midway Airport on Chicago's southwest side.

Midway was at its busiest at the peak of propeller aircraft traffic, but with the advent of the faster and more efficient jet airplanes, Midway's traffic and passenger volume fell off an almost direct ratio to the rise of passenger volume at O'Hare. At one time from 1962 to 1965, the commercial carriers abandoned Midway entirely, giving it over completely to private planes. In July of 1965, United Airlines returned to Midway with four round trips daily to Washington D.C. In mid-1967, twelve of the other major airlines announced their plans to return to the Southwest Chicago facility, and by mid-1968, these carriers will be operating from Midway at the rate of about 100 passenger flights each day. This is United Airlines Flight 561, non-stop to Chicago Midway from Washington D.C. The flight is at Boeing 727, probably the largest jet that Midway will be able to accommodate

even in its final state of reconstruction. Midway's longest runway in the years of its peak use was 6,410 feet. It will cost about $200,000 to extend Midway's runways to anything approximating the 11,000 600 foot runways used by the jets at O'Hare. An additional $4 million will be needed to modernize the passenger terminals at Midway, and it has been estimated that it will cost approximately $60 million to bring the combined facilities at Midway and O'Hare to peak interim use. The spending of this $60 million for these changes at O'Hare in Midway will keep Chicago more or less abreast of the problem into the 1970s, but they, again, rather than solve

the problems, merely emphasize the need for the third airport. Four general sites for the new airport have been proposed. Three of them on land to the Northwest, West, and Southwest of Chicago proper, but all of them bearing a necessary relationship to the existing airports in the precise geometry of air traffic patterns. Midway was the original world's busiest airport in Chicago. In 1962, Midway was phased out completely, and with the introduction of the efficient jet hardware, Chicago's O'Hare became the world's busiest. Just Northwest of Chicago and North of O'Hare is the Glenview Naval Air Station. It is felt by some that the Navy would be willing to give up its claim to the base if a strong case could be made for its conversion to a major civilian airport. The Navy flies single-engine jet interceptors off its runways now, and the local residents are fairly well used to the sound of jet engines.

But whether they could be convinced to endure the bigger and louder jets, taking off and landing much more frequently is somewhat doubtful. A second site has been proposed near Weston, Illinois, the recently confirmed site of the huge Atomic Energy Commission reactor. The third land site, one that has been actively proposed by interested land developers and businessmen, is Southwest of Chicago in Wil County near the communities of Joliet and Lockport. Each of the proposed new land sites has similar recommendations and similar difficulties. Each has a high speed expressway nearby, but at the same time, each is even farther from Chicago's loop than O'Hare's 17 miles, and each is subject to the congestion of rush-hour automobile traffic. Each area has its active proponents of one kind or another, just as each has its ever-growing

group of local residents beginning to object to the possible intrusion of noise and additional air pollution. Each of the proposed land sites, with the possible exception of the Wil County site, Southwest of the city, has the additional airline safety problem of potentially overlapping O'Hare's existing traffic patterns. The most dramatic of all the proposals for a third major airport, one that has captured the fancy of much of the public, as well as the backing of three of the four major Chicago daily newspapers, is the so-called Lake Airport. Recently, this general question has been asked many times by many people. In terms of water depth, noise, air and water pollution, and the physical dynamics, is a lake airport feasible. In response to the question, the city of Chicago has recently completed rather successful feasibility studies, indicating that an airport built on the lake bottom, behind a protective system

of dikes, connected to the city by causeway or tunnel, is not only physically practical, but apparently economically feasible, as well. Similar projects have been speculatively undertaken in Cleveland, relative to Lake Erie in Seattle for Puget Sound and in Los Angeles over the Pacific Ocean. The idea appears to be rather glamorous and exciting, seems to represent progress, and appears to smack of aviation 1970 style. Still, among the professionals and those with a stake in Chicago aviation, there is not total agreement. Ten years ago, I was a believer of an airport that could be built in the right. I would like to see it, I heard it sometimes, now the call for an airport three or four miles out into lake. I think perhaps at the moment, within the city, the most interest is in a lake porter, lake airport.

We certainly feel this has an excellent potential. Well, the pilots generally would prefer an airport that is located in such a situation where you encounter the best overall weather conditions for the general location, free of obstructions. And for example, here in the wintertime, when the lake has begun to hit the freezing temperatures and any wind blows, you splice water that freezes over the surface. You also encounter fogs, which is not generally found inland. So operationally, any airport that's located close to a body of water or surrounded by a body of water is less desirable from the pilot's point of view. I think that this is the only solution. It doesn't make any sense to me to fly a person from the west coast to Chicago in an hour in some odd minutes and perhaps even shorter when the faster planes come in and then have this person spend an hour or two hours getting from the airport to the central city.

Regardless of where the third airport is eventually built, the cost to bring the airport facilities in modern metropolitan areas up to date is enormous. It will cost approximately $60 million just to bring midway and o-hair airports abreast of the times. It will cost in the neighborhood of $250 to $300 million for the third airport. The problem is a simple one. By 1970, midway and o-hair, even brought up to date, will be at the limits of their facilities. The additional airport will have to be built somewhere. The quarter billion dollars will have to be spent regardless of where the third airport eventually is built on land or lake. The cost of the new airport will probably be underwritten, much as the costs for o-hair airport, through a combination of revenue bonds and federal aid and involving no local tax money. And once operated, the third airport will probably be self-supporting as o-hair is now.

Long before Chicago has a third airport, o-hair and other metropolitan airports here and abroad will have to be preparing for and meeting a more imminent challenge. The introduction into regular schedules of the 747, the jumbo jet, o-hair manager Pat Dunne described it for us. Well, the jumbo jet is a nickname to beast, professionally a press. It's an airplane that has 232 feet long, the 195 feet of wingspan, but four jet engines up in one of underneath the wing in what we call a pod fashion. These engines are six feet in diameter, 30 feet long, and will develop 40,000 pounds of thrust each. They'll carry 56,000 gallons of fuel and 16 stirruses.

The captain will have to call the wheel to be sure he's got everybody aboard, or he moves, and it'll have anywhere from there, it could be a full cargo airplane, it could be a partial cargo, partial passenger, it could be up to a 493 passenger, and the full of passengers are configuration. It's about the stewardess, it's about the stewardess. Well, Pat, on the question of airport logistics, what are you going to do when 493 passengers come tripping through the gates? How are you going to handle them? The big problem that confronts us in every other major airport in the world is how do we comfortably and hypothetically handle 1,000 pieces of luggage, coming off the 747, which is about to figure 493 people at hand. I would compare it to a very fancy sail, and Jim was based on a rainy Saturday morning when everybody reached in over the counter trying to get the bargain, but they'll get the

answer to it. They always have them at first. Everything that we've talked about so far, about jet air travel in the years to come, has to do with expansion of one kind or another. Expansion of the airplanes themselves and their passenger capacities, expanded schedules to meet the continually rising volume of passenger traffic, and expansion of the airport facilities for unloading, unloading, taking off, and landing. Eventually, it all comes down to one thing, more flights, more planes, more activity at all the airports, and eventually a direct confrontation with a problem of air safety. The airline professionals would prefer to meet the problem directly and now, rather than later. Dan Vakurovich, of the Federal Aviation Agency, is chief of the Chicago O'Hare tower. Well, the airport has to be far enough away so that its traffic patterns and flight patterns won't interfere with the existing airports, and that would be in an neighborhood of 20 miles or more.

If the airports are located too close, instead of having two separate airports, you have about an airport and a half. Well, if the present-size airplane he would like to have a runway that's at least 15,000 feet long, and one that can be kept clean in the wintertime when it's located in an area which requires this, he would like that there be no great masses of buildings and population around the approach and departure ends of the runways, and an adequate navigational system with all the associated lighting and accoutrements that it requires to conduct a safe operation at low-weather minimums. If we had all these things, we could do a lot of things that we cannot do today. The men in the tower are responsible for the control of aircraft that are operating on and near the airport to prevent collisions between the aircraft and between aircrafts and watching vehicles that are already on the airport.

The radar room in the first floor is responsible for controlling aircraft that are generally within a 30-mile radius of the airport and up to within five miles of the airport. The men rotate positions about once an hour and there's something like 18 to 20 positions to get them relief from one constant job. They also work at 40 hour a week, they have 20 to 26 days vacation a year, or authorized 14 day sick leave a year. I'm sure that a 50-mile minimum would be the adequate for good, safe, positive control. We in American Airlines also have safety very much at heart. While FAA sets forth the requirements for safety, we also have a safety program which is engineered for our particular activity and there are many times when our safety requirements actually exceed that that are required of us and there are times when we do not feel that we can fly even though some other airline might be fine.

While they're working fairly close to capacity, although we have never been able to determine the capacity is, we have days of 2100 aircraft which is more than 100 an hour and with 24 hours a day we should be able to handle 2400 aircraft or more. While the dangers won't increase, the delays to aircraft operations will and we find that the number of aircrafts are exceeding the capability of the controllers. We stop the aircraft on the ground, hold them on the ground, always in the air or held in certain areas that are segregated from other holding areas and at extreme measures we can inst do the flow control where we prevent aircraft from taking off at other airports or earlier. Many reasons why a selection of an airport is made by a political body that is not necessarily compatible with the best air traffic control considerations or the economics of the operation. So the selection should be primarily geared to the air traffic control requirements as

well as the surrounding terrain and all of the items associated with the efficient operation of an airport. Democratic Congressman Roman Puchinsky represents the 11th District of Illinois. Well here at Field is his next door neighbor. You've done a little bit of flying yourself between here and Washington, haven't you? Yes I have. I was estimating that I'd probably flown a half a million miles since I've been in Congress between Chicago and Washington. Is there legislation pending in Congress relative to air traffic and to some of the new planes such as the SST? Well we have a bill pending which has an excellent chance of passing which would provide that an airplane will not be certificated in the future unless it generates a tolerable level of jet noise. If it generates more than that tolerable level the FAA will not certify that aircraft. And this is a bill that has been recommended by the International Conference on Jet

Noise. I maintain that flying really today is the safest form of travel and I used to have a stewardess on one of the airplanes every time we landed she said you have just completed the safest portion of your journey drive carefully. I don't want air travel ever to deteriorate to the level that auto travel is where we're slaughtering 50,000 people every year on the highways of America. If 20 years ago the Congress had concerned has sold auto travel as we are not concerning ourselves with air travel perhaps we wouldn't be killing 50,000 people. In spite of the impressive statistics that bear out the relative safety of air travel as compared to auto travel in this country the critics of air safety contend that the federal agency most concerned with safety the FAA is simply under man. The critics contend that there are far too many commercial and privately operated planes in the air to be handled adequately by the controllers.

And many feel that air safety would be greatly enhanced if the use of the major metropolitan airports was restricted to use by the commercial airlines and excluding the private planes entirely. However, with some few exceptions most passengers leave matters of safety to the airlines, to the FAA and to the Congress. For the average passenger flying in and out of Mitchell Field, Logan Airport, JFK, Washington National, Los Angeles International, Lambert Dulles or La Guardia, in fact any of our metropolitan airports, passengers are most concerned with the matters closest at hand, personal comfort, meals and refreshments and whether or not their baggage got on the plane and will arrive with them at the next airport. Only one thing is certain in this city as in other major metropolitan areas a new airport will be built, where, well nobody knows yet, will it be finished in time, probably, when they finally decided to build this complex, which has become the world's busiest airport,

they did a five year construction job in two and a half years. The air transportation business is like that. I'm Jack Mabley, WTTW Chicago. I'm This is NET, the National Educational Television Network.