Three Holer Prelude

By Tony Vallillo

Authors note: Having shared with you the events of the sunset of my airline career, I turn now to the beginning; and, by the by, a panegyric to my favorite airplane!

It occasionally comes to pass that a particular type of airplane becomes so intimately associated with its milieu that it achieves iconic status. In the commercial airline industry this has occurred several times. The iconic airliner of the 1920's, at least in the USA, must surely be the Ford Trimotor, and in the 1930's the DC-3 so dominated the scene that it, too, came to represent commercial aviation in that decade. After WWII things got a bit more varied, but the icon of the golden age of air transport, as the 1950's are sometimes called, may well be the Lockheed Constellation, if for no other reason than the fact that it is surely the most beautiful transport airplane ever built.

The jet age has its icons as well, most notably the first really successful jet transport - the Boeing 707. This airplane became synonymous with the "Jet Set", and spawned an entire lifestyle for the rich and famous in the late '50's and beyond. Later, in the 1980's, the MD-80 can probably be thought of as the icon for the early deregulated era, and these days the new generation 737's are assuming that status, as the salad days of airline travel recede into the mists of time and memory - literally as well as poetically!

You may notice that I have left out the later regulated era, the time period from the mid 1960's until the mid 1980's. This is a complicated time, with a plethora of airliner types deployed around the world in all sizes and shapes, from the DC-9 to the 747. Yet although it may be a tough call, I would certainly propose a candidate for iconic status in that transitional period. The airplane I have in mind is unmistakable in shape and design, and also unforgettable for any pilot who had the privilege of flying it. It ended up being flown by just about every major airline in the world at one time or another, and its variants remained in service with some airlines for nearly 40 years. It served as the first career step for the majority of airline pilots hired between the mid 1960's and the late 1990's. The airplane I have in mind is, of course, the Boeing 727.

The second 727 test article, N72700, at LHR during testing for Pan Am's Berlin operation. Photo by Ralf Manteufel.

Much has been written about the origins and gestation of the Boeing 727 series, so we need only touch on the highlights. By the time that the 707 was beginning to shrink the world, both Boeing and the airlines were thinking smaller. Smaller airports, that is. The original 707's were ground loving beasts that required runways far longer than those of most civil airports of the day. In the late 1950's, 5000 feet of runway was considered a generous length, and 7000 was enough for even the biggest recips of the time. On the other hand, the first 707's needed a good 10,000 feet of pavement to get safely airborne, and for the international flights even more was required. Runway 13R/31L at JFK, for example, was extended to over 14,000 feet at the time the 707 began service, and quite often just about all of that length was put to use!

Early in the 1960's, Boeing built a slightly smaller version of the 707 which was intended to be used on shorter flights from slightly shorter runways. This was the model 720, known as such largely at the behest of United Airlines, who had backed themselves into something of a PR corner by extolling the virtues of their Douglas DC-8's over the competition's 707's to the point where it would have been downright awkward for them to have acquired the latter! So by calling the smaller edition a Boeing 720, United was able to create the illusion that what they had just purchased was in fact a totally different airplane.

Such was certainly not the case. Although there were a few structural differences (mainly in the shape and size of the wing) and it was somewhat lighter, the 720 was just a hot-rod model of the short 707, and some of the airlines that operated both Boeings didn't bother to differentiate them in advertising. American, for example, simply called them all 707's. Only the pilots knew for sure! And although the airplane did have somewhat better runway performance than its bigger sibling, a number of heavily patronized airports still could not accommodate it.

Rollout of the first Boeing 727 on 27 November 1962.

The 727 on its first flight, February 9 1963.

The principal of these under-endowed (runway-wise!) airports was New York's LaGuardia. Its two 5000 foot runways, considered exceptionally long in the days of the DC-3, weren't even long enough for the transcontinental DC-7's and later models of the Constellation, all of which had migrated over to the longer runways at Idlewild by the mid 1950's. But LGA stubbornly refused to die, since it was by far the most conveniently located of the Big Apple's three airports; and so it was that Eastern Airlines, one of the four main interested parties (the others were United, American and TWA), stipulated that the new jet that they wanted must be able to fly in and out of LGA. This was the impetus for the extraordinary high lift devices that eventually wound up on the wings of the new airplane.

There was a lively battle fought among the airlines and Boeing over the number of engines. United, which had always favored more engines than fewer, insisted on a four engine layout like the 720. But none of the other airlines were interested in the higher operating and maintenance costs of four engines, and although a two engine layout was explored (and would eventually emerge as the even more successful 737), the engines of the day were simply not powerful enough for two of them to do the job on an airplane of the size being discussed. No matter how the cards were cut, it was going to take at least three engines to make the airplane perform as desired, so three engines it turned out to have -- the first US Trimotor since Henry Ford's day.

This was, of course, much easier said than done. The problem of where to put the third engine was difficult to solve, and some of the proposals that were floated out of the engineering department were truly bizarre. The eventual solution is so well known today that it is hard to remember just what an outlandish innovation it was back in the early 60's, when artist's renderings of the new airplane began to circulate. But the engine-in-the-tail approach (actually pioneered by the British Trident) was completely successful, and Boeing's graceful curved inlet duct was so effective that Lockheed paid them a royalty to emulate it on the Tristar. (Douglas, more frugally, saved the money by devising an engine mount on the vertical stabilizer for its DC-10.)

First introduced by Eastern Airlines in early 1964, the 727 very quickly became ubiquitous, with all of the trunk airlines except Delta getting in the game. Pilots loved it because it was the first jetliner with hydraulic control boost in all three axes, thus ensuring a light and harmonious control feel that has never been surpassed even to this day. It also featured outstanding performance for its time, and the takeoff and climb out were sprightly in comparison with the four engine jets. Passengers loved it, in part because Boeing had made the decision to retain the 707 fuselage cross section, which allowed for 6 across seating and plenty of room overhead. In those days of 36+ inch seat pitch, the coach section of a 727 was a very comfortable place indeed! It was also quiet, both inside and out, although especially with respect to its outside noise footprint "quiet" is a relative term! It was called a "Whisperjet" by Eastern, to be sure, but that could be considered accurate only by comparison with the thundering roar of the early 707's and DC-8's! It was not until very late in its operational career, when special noise suppressing cowlings and tailpipes were mandated, that the 727 truly whispered.

Getting ready for the first flight. Note the logos of the airlines that had already placed orders just below the cockpit windows.

Original engineering drawing of the E-1 unit (as the first airplane was referred to at Boeing at the time). This airplane actually entered service with United after the test program and flew a full career at that airline. After UAL retired it, it was donated to the Museum of Flight in Seattle, where it is undergoing restoration.

Its introduction was marred by three fatal accidents in the first year and a half of service. The first two would be known today as controlled-flight-into-terrain (CFIT) events. A United flight inbound to O'Hare disappeared from radar screens over Lake Michigan, and after an intensive recovery operation about 80% of it was raised from the depths. Few distinct clues emerged, however, and the consensus was that the jet was below its assigned altitude and was simply flown into the water. Some months later, an American 727 flying a circling approach in bad weather at Cincinnati crashed into terrain that was hundreds of feet lower than the airport elevation. In both of these crashes the altimeter was an issue - most 727's featured a "drum type" altimeter which, in its early incarnation around that time, was difficult for pilots used to the three pointer model to read and interpret quickly. Specifically, it was easy to make an error of 1000 feet when interpreting this kind of altimeter. The type became more refined by the late 1960's and evolved into the "counter-pointer" altimeter that is still in use today on big airplanes.

The third accident brought into focus an unforeseen consequence of the high performance characteristics of the 727. A United flight approaching Salt Lake City wound up high and hot on the approach, and the Captain instructed the copilot, who was flying the airplane, to leave the throttles at idle for most of the approach. By the time that the Captain recognized the excessive sink rate that developed, it was too late. Jet engines took as much as 8 seconds to spool up from idle to go-around thrust in those days - seconds that this flight didn't have. The airplane slammed down short of the threshold so hard that the landing gear was driven up through the wings, igniting a deadly fire that continued for the entire slide down the runway.

The 727 achieved its remarkable field performance by a combination of power from the new fanjet engines and an extraordinary wing. The wing featured full span leading edge flaps and slats, and a trailing edge flap system that could extend a full 40 degrees to generate both lift and a lot of drag for short field approaches and landings. This was all well and good, and enabled the airplane to get into and out of LGA's original 5000 foot runways, among others. But with all of the flaps and slats deployed, and idle thrust set, some truly enormous sink rates could develop, and it was possible that such a high descent rate might not be fully appreciated until the airplane was fairly close to the ground. (This is an effect that can be seen even in MSFS). The lesson learned from the Salt Lake accident was to avoid low thrust high sink rate descents close to the ground, and pilot training for the 727 was improved accordingly. The airplane subsequently racked up a good safety record in operations all over the world for many decades.

I myself followed the gestation of the 727 in my youth - it was the first major airplane type introduced after I was more or less aware of what was going on in the world of aviation. I built models of it and read books about it, and no doubt somewhere in the recesses of my developing mind there lurked the conviction that I would one day fly it. The three-holer was my favorite airplane in those days, as it would remain for years to come.

Even Southwest operated the 727! This is the first one they had, which was a Braniff airplane that was "loaned" to them when they won a lawsuit against that company. A decade or so later, they leased a half dozen or so from People Express for a short time. Photo by Aris Pappas.

727 circa 1970, in the original AA scheme. When I flew this one, around eight years after this picture was taken, it had the new livery. You can see the leading and trailing edge high lift devices clearly, as well as the original smoky engine exhaust! Photo by Bob Garrard.

By the time I became a pilot in the Air Force, the 727 was being flown by just about every airline in the country, the only exceptions being the smaller of the local service companies like Southern or Texas International. The rest of the local service airlines would, for the most part, eventually fly the 727 - Allegheny, Piedmont, Frontier, North Central, Ozark, Alaska, Northeast, and yes, even Southwest operated it at one time or another (Southwest operated a single Braniff-owned airplane for awhile as the result of an anti-trust settlement, and a handful of leased People Express airplanes a bit later). In fact, aside from Southern, TI and Air Cal I'm hard pressed to think of an airline that existed prior to deregulation that did not fly at least one 727! It truly was that universal, a status no airplane had achieved since the DC-3 in the 1930's.

So it seemed obvious to me, as an aspiring airline pilot, that the 727 was going to play a role in my professional career, no matter what airline eventually hired me. It also seemed obvious that my first exposure to it was going to be from a seat that faced sideways most of the time! The 727 was the last single aisle airliner to feature the flight engineer as an integral part of the crew - indeed, after the mid 1960's the only new airplanes that had a position for the FE were the widebodies. It is true that the 737 flew, until the early 1980's, with a third pilot as part of the crew at some airlines (UAL, Western, and a few others), but that person was not a flight engineer, nor was there either provision or need for one - the third pilot (known in the industry as the "Guy in Back", or GIB) was promulgated by the UAL pilots and adopted by ALPA as a general policy, although it may not have been enforced at all ALPA airlines.

By the time I was ready to leave the Air Force and seek my fortune, it was possible to buy training on the 727 as either an FE or a pilot. In those days of mostly military trained pilots with thousands of jet hours in the applicant pool, it was a widely held belief that the more qualifications a pilot had on his or her resume, the more likely it would be that an airline would come knocking at the door. And so most of us undertook to add as many certificates and ratings to our licenses and logbooks as we could afford. Actually, it would be more accurate to say "as Uncle Sam could afford", since all of us who were in the service had access to the GI Bill, which was perfectly happy to pay for flight training at the higher commercial levels.

There were several paths to a Flight Engineer certificate in the mid 1970's. The written exam, of course, could be taken after simply signing up for a weekend ground school, and several companies dined out on that source of revenue for many years. The one I availed myself of took an approach that is now more or less standard - they had created a book composed entirely of questions and answers that were on the real test (although many more than actually appeared on the test, just like today). Familiarity with these, which could be achieved with as little as a few days perusal, was sufficient to pass the FE exam.

(Before you get the wrong idea about the actual ease of taking a test like this, remember that I had, at this point, several thousand hours of heavy multi-engine jet flying experience along with all of the training that went along with it! It was this experience that made it possible to simply "cram" for the test and actually pass it.)

Pan American operated the 727 in Europe and the Caribbean/Latin America. The original IGS (Inter German Service) to and from Berlin was a 727 operation. Photo by Richard Vandervord.

TWA was another early operator of the 727. Photo by Bob Garrard.

The Flight Engineer certificate itself could be acquired in one of two ways. Either I could seek out a certain Air Force flight engineer in our C-141 Wing who happened to be an FAA designated examiner for the FE ticket, or I could buy a slot at the full course of training at the Braniff Airline School in Dallas. Although the idea of getting the FE certificate essentially for free on a C-141 had some attraction, I soon decided that it was not the best way to go about it. For one thing, although I was an aircraft commander on the C-141, I was by no means familiar with the arcane doings back at the engineers' panel. The 141 was a complex, systems intensive airplane, and although all Starlifter pilots had studied those systems in the original trip through the "University of MAC" (Military Airlift Command) at Altus AFB Oklahoma, none of us had the level of expertise that the engineer position required. So passing the FE flight check on the panel of a 141 was by no means a sure thing. Nor was it really legal as far as the Air Force was concerned, since pilots were not qualified to sit at the FE panel, even for training. By far the most important element of the decision, however, was the fact that no airline flew C-141's, and thus none of them would be much impressed by an FE ticket obtained on that airplane!

The Braniff school, on the other hand, used the 727 as its basis (although it was also possible to take the training on the DC-8). Braniff, in the mid 70's, had a requirement for employment that was unique in all of the industry - the applicant had to possess an actual FE certificate, not just complete the written. And, although it was unstated per se, it was clearly understood by the applicant pool that Braniff wanted that FE ticket to have been acquired in the 727. In order to make it possible for an individual to get an FE ticket on the 727, Braniff kindly (!) made their own school available to anyone who could cough up the 5000 bucks they charged. That was a ton of money back then, and although a very small number of pilots went seriously into hock to finance it on their own, the overwhelming majority of Braniff Education Systems (the name of the training subsidiary) students were vets on the GI Bill. Braniff pretty much had this market to itself when I got out of the Air Force, and so it was to Braniff that I decided to go. A year or two later, a few other airlines, including American, got on the GI Bill gravy train, but none of them had the success that Braniff enjoyed for a number of years. Of course, none of them required pilot applicants to have an actual FE ticket either! (Another airline that for years required applicants to have an actual qualification on an airliner was Southwest, who required the 737 type rating. They, however, did not sell the training - an applicant had to go find it someplace else.)

So, having filled out the paperwork for the GI Bill funding (not for the first time - I had already gotten a CFI and taken a CFII course on the bill prior to the Braniff school), I set forth from Charleston headed west on Interstate 20 in my fairly new Fiat 124 Spyder convertible, bound for the promised land!

Continued in the next installment: Wrench

Anthony Vallillo
avallillo767@gmail.com

Three Holer Series

Three Holer Prelude

Three Holer Part 1: Wrench

Three Holer Part 2: Type Rating

Three Holer Part 3: Hired!