Ask the pilot

Dreaming of the long-forgotten Caravelle: Why do today's jetliners look so ugly?

By Patrick Smith

Oct 11, 2002 | Feedback to my jabs against general aviation (G.A.) have been unexpectedly tame, and those who've commented have, for the most part, agreed with my assessment of the pleasure-flight realm as something to be wary of. My last ride in a piston-powered airplane was in the summer of 1990, and I swore I'd never be back.

This might seem treasonous to many airline pilots, lots of whom indulge in G.A. flying on the side, but it all goes back to the forces that drove me to airplanes in the first place. As a kid I had no particular obsession with flying, but just the same I loved studying the airlines and the places they flew. On weekends between grades 6 and 9, I made trips to the airport and amassed a footlocker of airline-issue collectibles -- timetables and stickers and baggage tags and barf bags -- which today would be piling up the bids on eBay if only I hadn't thrown the entire locker into the garbage when, in the early 1980s, I decided I was more intrigued by the lyrics of the Dead Kennedys and Bad Brains than the air traffic control chatter on my scanner.

In the mid-1990s, Boeing ran an advertisement in Air Transport World magazine that featured its famous product, the 747. The ad was a two-page spread, with a nose-on silhouette of the 747 against a dusky orange sunset. "Where / does this / take you?" asked Boeing in letters decreasing evocatively in size across the centerfold. Below, the text read: "A stone monastery in the shadow of a Himalayan peak. A cluster of tents on the sweep of the Serengeti plains. The Boeing 747 was made for places like these. Distant places filled with adventure, romance, and discovery."

OK, it was syrupy and melodramatic, but I so related to this weepy bit of corporate P.R. that I clipped it from the magazine and kept it in a cardboard folder. Whenever it seemed my career was going nowhere (which was all the time), I'd pull out the ad and attempt to draw some inspiration.

Ironically enough it was a good friend of mine, not me, who got to fly the 747, thus becoming an almost larger-than-life figure to me (and a much wealthier one), heading off to Shanghai or Hong Kong while I flew to Hartford and Columbus.

So I apologize if you're upset that I can't tell you the technical specs of an F-18 and don't share your appreciation for the lines of a Piper Cub. It just ain't where I'm coming from.

The 747, by the way, remains in production, now in its 33rd year. There have been various incarnations of the basic type, the newest of which, the extended-range 747-400, recently made its maiden flight. As many of you know, the new Airbus behemoth, the A380, is destined to replace it as the biggest-ever passenger transport. (The absent designators in the chain of Airbus models -- A350, A360, and A370 -- are missing and presumed skipped.) Upon the A380's inauguration, the Europeans will have achieved a new standard not only in size but, alas, in ugliness too. The bulbous A380 will debut with none of the 747's grace.

Regarding the ruthlessly generic designs of today's airplanes, I beg to differ that, as one designer put it, "air does not yield to style." Must the best new airplanes, by aerodynamic necessity, lack even vaguely assertive aesthetics? Virtually all modern airliners are made by two companies, homegrown Boeing and the European consortium, Airbus Industrie. The shrunken gene pool has stuck us with a lineage of inbred look-alikes.

At a major airport recently, I watched an Airbus A320 taxi past the window, and as it did so three women sitting against the glass burst out in a collective giggle. "Look at the goofy little plane," one of them said. And you've got to admit, the twin-engined A320 is something less than elegant, a kind of utilitarian caricature that looks as though it might have popped from an Airbus vending machine, or maybe hatched from an egg laid by an A380.

I point out exceptions, such as the A320's big brother, the much more urbane A340. Unlike most recent designs, the A340's calls for four engines instead of the standard two, but why does a plane need to be ugly just because it has two engines? Regardless of the number of motors, why can't an attractive and distinctive profile, like that of the long-forgotten Caravelle, or even the quite sexy 727, be fitted with modern systems and avionics?

Call it pop aviation culture. I believe a corporate unwillingness and a lack of imagination, not the rules of aerodynamics, are responsible for so many uninspired copycats. That's a romantically cynical way of seeing it, of course, as the standardization and interchangeability of parts and assembly lines make for a better use of resources and bigger profits. But I fear the Boeing 747 is probably the last true icon of commercial aviation.

Next Page: What's in the black bag? And what's with those highfalutin watches?

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