April 1976
From The Space Library
Air Force cold-weather tests of an air-cushion landing system for use on large transport aircraft were completed after 4 wk at a site in Canada. The device, which resembled an upside-down life raft installed under the fuselage, was made of rubber and nylon; it measured about 10 m long and about 4 m wide. The elastic container was filled with air from two engines mounted under the wings; air forced out through more than 6800 holes on the bottom surface created an air bearing between the landing surface and the trunk. The cushion system, successfully demonstrated in the late 1960s on a smaller single-engine aircraft, had the advantage of exerting a very small amount of pressure over the entire landing surface as contrasted to conventional landing systems. Further tests of the system would be conducted on the twin-engine short-takeoff-and-landing (STOL) aircraft. (AFSC Newsreview, Apr 76, 15)
Bicentennial year 1976 also marked the 50th birthday of scheduled-airline service in the U.S., the National Aeronautic Association reported. On 13 April 1925, Henry Ford had started an air-freight service between Detroit and Chicago, first such commercial flights on a regular schedule. Upon passage of the Air Commerce Act of 1926, one of NAA's founding members, William P. MacCracken, Jr., took office as the first U.S. Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Aeronautics. By 1931, airlines were spanning the country; by 1950, U.S. airlines carried 19 million passengers 16 billion km, and in 1975 they carried more than 200 million passengers 263 billion km-amounting to almost 80% of intercity public passenger travel in the U.S. Airlines also accounted for 93% of travel to overseas destinations. In 1976, the U.S. scheduled-airline fleet included 2200 jet aircraft serving communities nationwide with 13 000 daily flights. (NAA News, Apr 76, 3)
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