Idlewild in sight — At flight’s end, safety eludes an Italian airliner (Part 4)

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The passengers who had boarded LAI Flight 451 in Rome faced nearly a full day in the air. When the plane landed for refuelling at Shannon Ireland and Gander, Newfoundland they could stretch their legs in brief sorties to the airport terminals, but in the air they could not escape the vibration and noise from the plane’s four Pratt & Whitney R-2800-CB17 "Double Wasp" radial engines, each swinging a huge, four-blade, variable-pitch Hamilton Standard propeller 15 feet (4.6 metres) in diameter, more than two and half times the height of the average Italian male in 1954. Cabin noise was so loud that normal speech was difficult.

Except for occasional bathroom breaks or brief walks through the cabin to stretch their legs, Flight 451’s passengers were confined to their seats for most of the flight, including nearly 10 hours on the Shannon-Gander leg of the flight. By the time the DC-6B was preparing to land at Idlewild Airport, its passengers had to have been bored, anxious, and exhausted. Especially exhausted. Those passengers who might never have flown before were no doubt “white knuckle” fliers who wondered if they would survive the landing.

1954 had not been a stellar year year for aviation. Sixty airliners would crash by the end of the year, killing 680 passengers and crew. One of them, and and one person was killed highjacking a hijacking incident 33,890 traffic fatalities in U.S. in 1954 (nearly 50 X greater than the number of airline crash deaths.)

It’s not as if the challenges of long distance travel hadn’t been examined. In 1862 The Lancet, a weekly peer-reviewed general medical journal published in Great Britain, is among the world's oldest and best-known of general medical journals. In 1862, the journal published a report on "the influence of railway travelling on public health". The article noted noted included headaches, deafness, incessant noise in the ears (tinnitus), sleeplessness (insomnia), depression, and numbness of the limbs (paresthesia) as sequelae of a long-distance journey by train. The Lancet was spot on, and the problems it described would only became worse with longer and longer journeys, not that many airline passengers would be deterred: the concept that time is money had taken firm hold by the 20th Century.

Air travel had literally begun to “take off” after the First World War, which had seen “flying machines” evolve into fighters and primitive bombers. After the war, the bombers evolved into transports for freight and people, and aircraft manufacturers began building planes which could accommodate more and more passengers and move them at speeds that had never possible on trains or ships.

In the early days of long-distance passenger flight, airlines had to convince potential customers that airliners provided a faster and better experience overall than transportation by rail or steamship. It was a hard sell at first: trains were reliable and, for wealthy passengers, comfortable, and ocean liners and even some freighters offered expensive but luxurious travel options.

To counter the general opinion that airliners weren’t ocean liners, their interiors came to look like they would be more at home at sea than in the sky. Pan American Lines went so far as to call their fleet of aircraft “clippers” after the famous, fast sailing ships that were noted for their rapid transportation of goods between marketplaces in Asia and those in North America and Europe. Their pilots were issued black trousers and double-breasted blazers with braid denoting their rank, and white officer-style combination caps with either gold or silver insignia depicting either airline name or logo even wore uniforms that looked more nautical than aerial.

By the 1930s, aircraft manufacturers were beginning to build airliners that were not just faster than any previous transports, but more comfortable, featuring upholstered seats, cabin heating, and sound insulation. Boeing 247, which first flew in 1933, was followed early in 1934 by the Douglas DC-2. In October, 1934, a heavily modified 247D placed third overall and second in the handicap section of the MacRobertson Trophy Air Race between London and Melbourne. In the same race, an unmodified DC-2 flown by the Dutch KLM Airlines, stopping at each of the airline’s regular stops, and even being forced to land on a racetrack at Albury, Australia because of a storm, placed 2nd overall, and first in the handicap section.

The triumph of the DC-2 Uiver at Melbourne turned to tragedy just two months later when, on its first commercial flight from Amsterdam to the Dutch colony of Java, the aircraft crashed and burned in the Syrian Desert. There were no survivors, and no cause ever established, but the crash was only a blip on the trend toward building ever faster and bigger airliners, building a customer base by trying to convince potential passengers that they would get bigger bang for their travelling buck by flying rather than taking a train or ship.

Only two years after the DC-2 was soon, Douglas displaced by the somewhat larger, faster, and more streamlined Douglas Sleeper Transport (DST). The DST could fly from coast to coast in the United States in only 15 hours; passengers, if they wished, could sleep in comfortable berths through the necessary three landings for refuelling. The DST’s didn’t last long after airlines figured out that they could cram in a few more paying passengers if they removed the sleeping berths. But it took the innovations of the Second World War to produce civil airliners that could provide fast, long-range, comfortable transportation between all of the world’s major population centres. The war had also provided something just as important as better aircraft: well-trained aircrew. Many airline pilots, navigators, and flight engineers had earned their wings by pioneering air routes across every ocean and continent to deliver aircraft, soldiers and war matériel to combat zones as well as bombs, rockets, bullets, and propaganda leaflets to enemy cities and military installations.

Most airline passengers of the 1950s probably weren’t aware of the trials by fire through which many of their pilots had flown. Nor did they understand such refinements as variable-pitch propellers, pressurization, radar, auto-pilots, and LORAN navigation systems. But they did appreciate the fact that the airliners they flew in were warm, relatively quiet, and fast. The DC-6B, in fact, was one of the first commercial aircraft dedicated entirely to passenger comfort and speed. It was fully pressurized and had a climate-controlled cabin. It could fly higher, further and more economically than most other passenger planes of the era; many regarded it as the ultimate piston-engine aircraft of the 1950s. It would become the last, large piston-engine-powered airliner before jetliners like the Boeing 707 began taking the lion’s share of the market.

Outwardly, the DC-6B was nearly identical to the DC-6. Designed only for passenger use, it lacked the cargo doors of the standard DC-6 and was 5 feet (1.5 metres) longer. It was regarded as the ultimate piston-engine airliner from the standpoint of ruggedness, reliability, economical operation, and handling qualities.

Passengers on LAI’s DC-6Bs would come to appreciate something that airline passengers can enjoy these days: good food! In 1951, just five years after LAI was established, began serving hot meals, said to be the first in the airline industry and were served on luxurious Richard Ginori china. In short, Flight 451’s passengers were benefitting from the best that aviation technology and business acumen could offer. A faster flight experience would only be offered by the next generation of airliners — among them the Douglas DC-7, the Lockheed Electra II, and the iconic Boeing 707, the first successful jetliner.

Italians were justifiably proud of Linee Aeree Italiane. The flag carrier started operations on May 5, 1947, in which year it carried more than 10,000 passengers in Savoia-Marchetti SM.95s, Italian four-engine, mid-range transport aircraft which first flew in 1943. By 1950, LAI had purchased four Douglas DC-6B airliners and begun carrying mail between Italy and the U.S.

LAI could not hope to make a profit on passenger traffic alone. From its beginnings, airlines depended on signing lucrative government airmail contracts, normally the only thing that stood between airlines and insolvency. The following FFC (first flight cover), flown on an LAI DC-6B in July, 1950, represents LAI’s first airmail flight from New York City to Rome.

xxxxxIn 1965, Italy issued a stamp commemorating nighttime airmail in Italy; it pictures an LAI DC-6B landing at Ciampino Airport in Rome.

By the time Linee Aeree Italiane Flight 453 lifted off the runway at Rome and headed for New York City, the airline, like all airlines at that time, was deep into the struggle to convince potential passengers that it offered better value than shipping companies, regardless of the luxuries that their storied ocean liners were offering. But it seems, however, that shipping companies weren’t fully aware of the threat to their existence posed by international airlines. Why else would they order airmail envelopes to their passengers. Among the passengers who took advantage of the envelopes was the Pulizter Prize-winning novelist, short-story author, and playwright, William Saroyan.

In only a few years, Linee Aeree Italiane had made its mark on the world of civil aviation, and had placed Italy into a strong competitive stance against the national airlines of the United States, Great Britain, Netherlands, and France. But the last thing that the passengers of LAI Flight 451 had in mind was Italy’s place in international aviation. All they wanted was to hear and feel the thump of the Douglas airliner’s big wheels on the tarmac at Idlewild. It would never happen.

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