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As never before, the airlines are being forced to readjust their operations to meet their new mass-transit role and to make the crucial decisions about the planes they need to carry the big new crowds. The old planes on which the world flew into the jet age two decades ago are wearing out. Based on conservative growth estimates made before the travel boom, airlines in the non-Communist world by 1993 will need at least 4,600 new planes worth $138 billion.
In response, the major U.S. and European planemakers are developing a new generation of fat-bellied, thin-winged jets specifically designed to accommodate the traveling masses, whisking them along at far less cost in fuel than today's jets. Yet the new craft are so expensive—$20 million to $30 million—that the airlines must be confident of their own future before they make their purchases.
Never has the future been less certain. The U.S. airline industry has been treated like a semi-monopolistic public utility, with routes and fares controlled by the Civil Aeronautics Board, which has sought to avoid over-competition and ruinous price wars. Now, President Carter seeks to free the airlines from Government economic controls entirely and allow them to fly anywhere at any time and charge any price, no matter how ridiculously low. Later this month the CAB will allow airlines to reduce regular fares as much as 70% in economy and sell first-class tickets at any price they think the traffic will bear. Next, the CAB intends to allow airlines to start flying new routes without asking anyone's permission. The industry's leaders are anxiously pondering the longer-range impact of Carter's policies, but for the present they are unquestionably effective: 40% of all passengers now fly at reduced rates, and many would not have flown without them.
Remarkably, people are putting up with the discomfort of sardine-style flight with good spirits and camaraderie. True, there are some gripes, especially among business travelers who resent being jammed in by passengers paying a fraction as much. Affluent travelers, once the mainstay of the airlines, sometimes are put off by the rumpled chic of youthful interlopers; cut-off jeans and scruffy sandals seem de rigueur for many young passengers who only last year would have been taking the bus or hitchhiking. Inexperienced travelers put an extra burden on the already overtaxed stewardesses. "Some of them don't even know how to fasten their seat belts," moans a Hughes Airwest hostess.