Aviation: Speeding Up Air Travel

The faster airliners fly, the longer it takes short-hop passengers to reach their destinations. More speed, more traffic, more noise and ever bigger planes — all this means that airports must be moved farther and farther from the cities that passengers are trying to reach. As a re sult, estimates U.S. Aviation Consultant Laszlo Boszormenyi, a New Yorker fly ing to Washington in a short-range jet now actually averages only 79 m.p.h. midcity to midcity. On the Chicago-Detroit run, the pace drops to 66 m.p.h.

The U.S. Department of Transportation and other federal agencies are now considering a preliminary proposal for passenger and cargo tests of an aircraft that could put the spring back in short-hop air travel. The tester: New York Airways, operator of a helicopter shuttle between Manhattan and nearby air ports. The plane: the Breguet 941, a spectacular French STOL (short takeoff and landing aircraft), with the capabili ty of handling passengers at points much closer to the centers of cities.

Downtown Landing. Shaped like a stubby blimp with wings, the 78-ft. Breguet 941 can carry 60 people or ten tons of cargo — 51 tons more than Cana da's de Havilland Caribou, the largest operational STOL-type transport. At 270 m.p.h., it also flies faster than any helicopter and has a greater maximum range: 500 miles. Developed as a mil itary assault transport, it can land fully loaded at speeds as slow as 55 m.p.h.

on a 214-ft. runway, take off within 377 ft. One prototype model landed easily on a downtown Brussels street.

The Breguet 941 accomplishes all this with the modest power of four 1,500-h.p. turboprop engines mounted on a 77-ft. wingspan, and two striking innovations. All four engines are mechanically linked to a flexible driveshaft set in the leading edges of the wings. If one or more engines fail, all four of the 941's big 15-ft. propellers continue to spin, powered by the engines still running. In addition, the wings are equipped with outsize flaps that lower to an angle of 105°—about 15° more than the flaps of any conventional aircraft. The big propellers and abnormal flap angle are the source of the 941's superior STOL capability.

So impressed was McDonnell Aircraft with the 941—even before its first-rate performance at the 1965 Paris Air Show—that the company quickly obtained a license to manufacture a U.S. Breguet to be designated the McDonnell 188-E. Although the plane is yet to be built, McDonnell is negotiating a contract with N.Y. Airways for a three-year demonstration of the plane in the crowded Northeast. U.S. Transportation Secretary Alan S. Boyd believes that aircraft such as the Breguet 941 will one day dominate short-range U.S. commercial flight.