tim's experiment

We get a flight every two minutes or so round my way. We are under what I think is known as the final approach, but the planes are still about 3,000 feet up. As it is quiet in the area and we are on a hill which occupies some of the 3,000 feet they are noisy enough not to be ignored completely. When the airport first moved some of our neighbours tried to get up a petition against the flight path going over us. I had to tell them that though I sympathised we have just moved from Kowloon Tong, where aeroplane noise was really noise. So I didn’t sign it.

After all there is still something wonderful about watching planes flying, at least for me. My only complaint is that it is a lot less wonderful than it used to be, because nowadays all the planes are the same. There are, after all, only two manufacturers. If you are looking at an airliner the only question is whether it is an Airbus or a Boeing. You can then consider the individual model, but this is not very satisfying, because the model is only identified by a string of numbers anyway.

This was not always the case. I still remember the first aeroplane I ever rode in. It was called a Lockheed Constellation and had a strikingly elegant shape. The Lockheed company apparently thought that if the fuselage was shaped in wing-like curves it would contribute some lift. Nobody else copied this innovation so I suppose it was a mistake. But it did produce a strikingly handsome aeroplane. Pix here http://www.google.com.hk/search?tbm=isch&hl=en&source=hp&biw=1128&bih=695&q=lockheed+constellation+aircraft&gbv=2&oq=lockheed+const&aq=6&aqi=g8g-m1&aql=undefined&gs_sm=c&gs_upl=3085l7103l0l16l12l0l1l1l0l253l1657l1.8.2l11

And like other airliners it had a name. One took this for granted and the Douglas company (which still make airliners in those days) was considered very eccentric for sticking to numbers. Travellers by air were supposed to partake, in a high-speed way, in the romance of sea travel. And ships had of course always had names.

This convetion has now been abandoned. I notice Boeing is calling its latest invention a Dreamliner but their heart did not seem to be in it and the new machine already has the usual boring three digits. As well as the terminology it seems the aeroplanes are increasingly undistinguishable from each other. I suppose American windtunnels and European windtunnels produce much the same result so the best shape for the usual speed emerges from everyone’s research as the same thing. Engines are now invariably worn in pods under the wing. Consequently there is no need for the eccentric tails which used to distinguish some models. The number of engines seems to be standardising rapidly on two, more or less regardless of the size of the plane – or for that matter the length of the journey; the convention that long trips over oceans required four engines seems to have been dropped.

I suppose this is all a result of air travel becoming routine, at least in the technical sense. There are no longer any great surprises in store and accidents on respectable airlines are gratifyingly rare. Still it seems a shame. I remember much the same thing happening on the railways. When steam locomotives, which usually had names, were replaced by diesels there was an attempt to give at least the larger diesels names. They did not catch on. As all the intricate practical arts involved in steam locomotion were replaced by the sort of controls you get in a car, the whole business became routine, efficient … and dull.

I suppose it is a bit ungrateful to be picky about a system which can whisk you to London in 12 hours but I obstinately hope that we will eventually see a return of airships, which will sail serenely and rather slowly through the sky at heights where you can still see the ground. And they will have names.

Hope: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/05/06/aeros_pentagon_deal/