Squabble to Be First

Four phone calls were made from Washington last week to the presidents of the nation's four leading airlines. On the line was Najeeb Halaby, who heads the Federal Aviation Agency and is the President's principal aviation adviser. Halaby was about to appear before a Senate hearing to argue the Administration's case for a $60 million appropriation to get a U.S. supersonic jetliner program moving -- and he needed some help. What about placing some orders, asked Halaby, even though the final design of the U.S. plane has not been decided on. U.S. airlines, though hitherto eager to order the Anglo-French Concorde supersonic because it promised to be first, made a show of confidence in the eventual success of the U.S. program by ordering 29 planes.

Anxious to Move. Each of the air lines that Halaby called seemed to get the idea that it would be the first to order a made-in-the-U.S. supersonic, and the result was an unseemly squabble. Trans World Airlines President Charles Tillinghast was the first to announce that he had placed an order. But American Airlines President C. R. Smith contended that he had telegraphed an order four days earlier, and Pan American's Juan Trippe argued that he, too, had ordered planes before TWA. TWA, at least, was first to send along a check, as a $600,000 down payment on six planes. Only later did Pan Am send a check and American offer to. The only one of the four airline executives who refused to join the scramble was United's Pat Patterson, who dismissed the whole thing as "a lot of expensive publicity."

Despite the confusion, the airlines' response greatly strengthened Halaby's position before Oklahoma Democrat Mike Monroney's aviation subcommittee, and brightened hopes that the Senate would quickly pass the $60 million appropriation recently approved by the House. After passage, the technical task of getting the U.S. supersonic program off the ground will fall to Halaby's hard-nosed deputy, Gordon Bain, 54, a former vice president of Slick and Northwest airlines. Under Bain, the FAA will select an airframe company and enginemaker to build a supersonic transport, then oversee the project until the planes are certified as airworthy and delivered to the airlines.

Problems Ahead. The belated U.S. drive for a supersonic is complicated by some questions about the economics of the plane. At the Senate hearings, Civil Aeronautics Board Chairman Alan S. Boyd warned that supersonics may prove so costly to operate that they will force U.S. airlines back on to Government subsidy. But the hurry-up argument for building a supersonic jetliner comes from the belief that unless it develops its own, the U.S. will slowly and inevitably lose its aviation-design leadership to Europe.

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