Life of a Jetliner

A well-maintained Jetliner can last 30 or 40 years. What happens over the course of those decades?

Shiny and New (0-5 years)
Fresh off the assembly line, this plane has the latest technology. Today, this includes at-seat electrical power, in-flight WiFi, LED lighting, swivel bins, fancy seats. All the gadgets still work. The little touches combine to make an atmosphere: when you walk through the entrance, you look up and smile. This flight will be a little less dreary. Virgin America’s planes still have this shine on them.

Settling In (5-10 years)
Everything works. It... works. Your seat works. The in-flight-entertainment works, but it’s showing its age. The screen’s too small, the graphics too blocky. You’re happy to fly this plane, because it could be worse. Think JetBlue.

Journeyman (10-20 years)
No one claims this is still a new plane. But it’s cheaper to keep flying than to replace. The plane isn’t too old to learn new tricks: new seats inside so the airline can sell more tickets, winglets on the outside to improve efficiency, perhaps a new paint job to match the latest fashion. These overhauls fit well during a “D” maintenance check: every 5 years check the plane by taking it all the way apart and putting it back together.

Second career (20 years)
It may happen after 10 years, or after 30. But there comes a point that the first owner of a plane is done with it. In our next post, we’ll see what becomes of second-hand planes.

B-36

The early Cold War was a time of improved technology but even more inflated expectations. Nuclear weapons were politically important, but unwieldy. (The B-29s that dropped nuclear weapons on Japan had to be specially modified; they were so close to the ground that to load they had to straddle pits dug in the runway.) The B-29 could deliver a finishing blow from near-by islands, but the Air Force wanted a plane that could span the globe to strike at the heart of the enemy flying from the USA (originally the enemy was Germany, but after WWII they just search-and-replaced to USSR). The result was the B-36.

The B-36 is an enlarged WWII bomber. The wings are straight not swept. Defensive turrets sprinkle the skin, even though increasing speeds rendered them practially useless. The engines are all in the wings, not podded. Oh, and there are ten (ten!) of them. Oh, and four of them are jets and six are piston engines. That’s right, it’s a pre-Prius hybrid. To optimists, this was the perfect mix of jets’ added thrust (for take-off and high-speed dashes) and pistons’ reliability and efficiency. This was a plane with an infomercial sales pitch, but it came along at America’s insomniac 2AM and taxpayers bought it.

With that context, the portraits themselves. A B-36 next to a B-29 looking the same, but larger, but less elegant. An early configuration with one giant tire. Another configuration with tank tracks instead of wheels. (Eventually, they settled on the normal many-wheeled model that every sane design ever uses.)

The B-36 proudly served for 7 years before its replacements arrived and the Air Force started scrapping them.

Middle School Portraits

Kids are cute; adults are functional. In the middle is puberty. If middle school was awkward for you. (And if middle school was really your life’s peak, well, I’ll try to use smaller words.) Planes are the same way. Early attempts at integrating jet engines are gangly-looking, braces-wearing, compromises. These planes have no descendants, and are worth looking at not to learn but to laugh.

Plane Card: B-47 Stratojet

The B-47 Stratojet is the first modern plane. Any plane made before it (and many after!) would catch your eye as dated if you saw it an airport. The B-47 would look small and a bit awkward, but has stood the test of time. It combined for the first time a pressurized cabin, swept wings, and podded engines.

It was the gleaming new toy/weapon for the Strategic Air Command (the branch of the Air Force responsible for socking it to the Soviets). First flown in 1947 and deployed in 1951. It starred in a propaganda film (sort of a proto-Top Gun) put out by Paramount Studios: Strategic Air Command, sharing the spotlight with Jimmy Stewart. (Fun Fact: Jimmy Stewart was a pilot who flew more than 20 bomber combat missions over Europe.)

But the B-47 carried bombs, not passengers. It set technical achievements but didn’t change the way we travel. So why care about it? Building the B-47 gave Boeing the requisite expertise (and cash) to take these technical advances into the realm we care about. The B-47 isn’t the grandfather of the planes we fly in today; it was the rich uncle that paid grandpa’s tuition.