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Show 4T The Salt Late Tribune Sunday, November 27, 1983 After 25 years were still saying, Look, Ma, no propellers! All right, who is going PARIS to believe it? It says here that 25 years have slipped by since Pan American sent its first jet winging to Europe. And to prove it they dusted off a 707 now a senior citizen and long since and sent it winging across retired the Atlantic. Just for auld lang syne the anniversary plane even made a stop at Gander, that barren backwater in Newfoundland that was long the prime irritation of the transAtlantic flyer. In the days of piston-engin- e planes a stop at Gander on the way home meant you had another grueling, grinding five hours before the wheels touched down in America. I wasn't on the inaugural flight to Paris with the built-i- n Gander stop. With other journalists I was on the and spent the week flying America's first commercial jet back and forth across the Atlan- m jet-leng- c, jet-pla- C LPPR i Ams valiant race had been run using the first Boeing 707s off the assembly line. America was in a mad race with BOAC for the Atlantic Blue Ribbon. Actually Af that, Pan Commemorating the first commercial U.S. jet service, workmen place an anniversary seal on Pan American's Clipper American. The inaugural run was 25 years ago to Paris. goal line to goal line on a football field. stretch I remember sitting there in the balmy air of the Azores, where we ignominiously sat down to gulp more fuel, and clucking over the planes endless stretch of windows. Why, the tail itself was four stories high! And then there were other mar vels. Flying flush toilets, for instance, a hygienic first. Window shades that rolled up and down. Pilots no longer sat on the runway and revved engines. It was just up and away. On the jet thrust was pushing 111 passengers, six crew members, dinner, breakfast, baggage and 17,000 gallons of kerosene on a jetpath 6,450 feet long. It took 40 seconds for these propel- - of Experience) ROSE PARADE Dec. 28, 1983-Ja3, 1984 pods to lift that mass off the ler-le- ss ground. Iconsulted my notes and using the edtorial we wrote, Gravity pushed our head deep in the foam headrest, and when we tried to raise it and get up, our brains dove and dipped like frolicking porpoises, Ah, the youthful exuberance of overwriting. The steepness of the ascent was mmn Fun Time Tours (15Yrs. (Per person, party of 6, double occupancy slightly higher, does not include $6 n. 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Clamshell deflectors formed out of the tailpipe of the engines to reverse the thrust. tic. Flashy fliers that we were, we overflew Gander. But then we had to stop in the Azores on the way over and in Iceland on the way back. That took the edge off the chance to make speed records, but it was all mighty interesting. We were, after all, conditioned to flying the DC-- 6 and the DC-- 7 and zooming across an ocean in a plane without a propeller had its fascinations. In fact, I tacked a jazzy headline on the piece I wrote: Up the Jetstream Without a Propeller. I was sure it was a catchy play on Up the Creek Without a Paddle. No matter. I noted that Boeings 707 was 31 feet the biggest longer than a DC-7thing since the Leviathan. It flew, I wrote breathlessly, as fast as a bullet from a .45 caliber pistol. It carried as much fuel as a motorist might use in 45 years of driving a car. And if you were to put two 707s end to end they would the British won it, sending their Comet 4 from New York to London in six and a half hours. They started service on Oct. 4, Pan Am on Oct. 26. For all that, the Czechs, flying a Russian Tupelove jet, had begun Prague-Moscoservice in two hours and 20 minutes as early as 1956. Aeroflot followed suit and by August 1958 was flying Moscow to New Delhi in six and a half hours, saving of nearly five hours. I would fly that Soviet jet a few months later, having hooked up with it in Paris after a Pan Am regularly-schedule- d non-sto- p flight from New York. By then the 707 had become commonplace even though on this flight we had hitched on to a tailwind that rocketed our ground speed to 770 miles an hour. But I get ahead of my story. On week 25 years ago I flew home on the first westbound jet flight, stopping over in Iceland long enough to patronize its brand-neduty-fre- e liquor store. When we were aloft again on that last homeward leg the plane rose remarkably over Greenland, a stupendous sight for five miles up. A flys eye view of a marvelous marshmallow sundae tinted with the grenadine of a late afternoon polar sun. blamed on the noise abatement people who lived in the vicinity of what was called Idlewild Airport and who were bugging the Port of New York Authority. The same August body was three months late opening the runway which limproper ited the payload we could haul, thus necessitating our Azorean putdown. d'here had been much talk that the jet was so steady you could stand a quarter on end during flight. Smart aleck all the way, I wrote that the only money that could be stood on end was a stack of 620 bills. |
