History by the Numbers (2021) s01e16 Episode Script
Air Travel
1
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] Have you ever
wondered how many people
are in the sky right now?
- Um.
- Probably more than I imagine.
- Are we including
trapeze artists
and people launched
from catapults?
- 50,000.
- Half a million.
- A million people.
- [Narrator] On any given
day, you're likely to find
about 1.2 million
people in the air.
- Now, that is a
lot of airplanes.
- Okay, that's a lot
of people (laughs).
- [Narrator] 2019
Was the busiest year
in the history of air travel.
- If you've ever seen
any of the flight charts
that show all the planes in
the air at the same time,
there's thousands and thousands.
- [Narrator] How did we go
from one brave passenger?
- It's hard to
understand how insane
you would have to
be (man screams)
to go on the first scheduled
commercial airline flight.
- [Narrator] To 40
million annual flights.
- [Flight Attendant] Here we go.
It's almost time to fly.
- [Narrator] It
takes wanderlust.
- I don't think there
are any human beings
who haven't dreamt of flying.
- [Narrator] Innovation.
- The jet engine
changes the whole game.
- [Narrator] Risque marketing.
- Each airline was kind of
trying to outcompete each other
with these really
beautiful stewardesses.
- The idea was that air
travel is the fulfillment
of a fantasy, and a part
of that fantasy was sex.
- [Narrator] And the
rise of coach class.
- The fact you only get
30 inches of leg room.
- It's a lot more democratic.
- [Narrator] This is
a story of firsts,
of millions, of billions.
- The 2010 Iceland
volcano explosion
cost airlines $1.7 billion.
- [Narrator] And the
lucky number seven.
This is air travel.
- Please fasten your seatbelt.
- [Narrator] Buckle up.
(upbeat music)
(plane engine roaring)
- Air travel has connected
people, culture, societies,
has allowed people to
travel quicker, faster,
more efficiently than we've
ever would've expected.
Air travel has
revolutionized everything.
- We need numbers to help
us imagine air travel.
What is the volume of luggage
getting moved every day?
What is the longest flight?
How many people are getting
onto an airplane every day?
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] To grasp
the true scope and reach
of air travel today,
look no further
than Hartsfield-Jackson
Atlanta International Airport.
- Atlanta is the world's
busiest passenger airport.
- [Narrator] More than
110 million passengers
come through its
doors every year.
- There's always a running
joke that no matter
where you are
traveling in the world,
that if there's a
layover, it's Atlanta.
- [Narrator] But ATL
would never have taken off
without an obscure
risk-taking druggist
and the magic of number nine.
(upbeat music)
In 1888, Atlanta
pharmacist Asa Candler
buys the secret recipe
to a new soft drink
with nine mysterious
ingredients.
He successfully markets
the syrupy tonic
and founds the
Cola-Cola Company.
Within two decades, it's
America's favorite soda.
- [Woman] Yum.
- [Narrator] But Asa's got
a thirst for a new venture.
With the profits
of his soda empire,
he gambles $77,674, or two
million in today's money,
on 287 acres of marshland.
- [Man] It's a fixer-upper.
- [Narrator] Then drains
the whole thing dry.
- In 1909, Asa Candler opens
up a raceway in Atlanta.
- [Narrator] Thousands flock
to see car races and air shows.
But after two seasons,
the novelty wears off.
- The raceway in Atlanta
is way ahead of its time
because the car is
just being introduced
to modern America and
middle-class America.
- [Narrator] The
speedway is a flop.
Asa's big idea is as
flat as stale soda pop.
The track sits
abandoned till 1919
when Asa lets pilots use
it as a landing strip.
A few years later, the city
officially takes it over.
- If Asa Candler could see
what happened to his vision,
his mind would explode.
(plane engine roars)
So, the land is now home to
Atlanta Hartsfield Airport.
It's a tiny portion of what
is the sprawling system
of runways and taxiways.
- [Narrator] In less than a
century, Asa's original airfield
multiplied by 16 to now
cover 7.3 square miles.
(upbeat music)
- The Atlanta airport
is absolutely huge.
Every time I've
flown through it,
my connection is in
a different terminal
on the other side
of the airport,
and you have to ride a tram
to get from one
place to the other.
- [Narrator] Hartsfield-Jackson
airport covers 4,700 acres,
and an average of
2,700 planes take off
and land here every single day.
(upbeat music)
- The airport itself
is an experience.
I mean, literally, you can do
everything at the terminal.
- It's like a fully-formed
city in itself.
I mean, you've got restaurants,
hotels, transportation hubs.
- They have little churches.
They have their
own police force.
They have public
transit that moves you
from one end to the other.
And it's all behind
a security wall.
- [Narrator] 63,000
people are needed
to run Atlanta's airport,
making it the number one
employer in the state.
(film reel clicking)
(whimsical music)
All airports owe a debt to
the pioneers of aviation,
but you'd be surprised
to discover some
aren't the usual suspects
from our textbooks.
- Aviation always starts with
the Wright brothers in 1903,
but people were
trying, experimenting,
learning to fly
long before that.
- [Narrator] From Leonard
da Vinci's 500 visions
of flying machines, to
the study of aerodynamics
by mathematicians like
Huygens or Newton.
- [Man] Come on, come on.
- [Narrator] Humans have
been attempting flight
for centuries.
- [Man] Oh, no.
- [Man] If it works,
it ain't stupid.
- I know nothing
of aerodynamics.
I don't know how
somebody figured it
out in the first place.
- The wheels come up and then
it's autopilot, isn't it?
- I should know
this as an engineer.
Air that flows
faster has less lift
than air that flows slower,
so the design of the wing
causes air to flow
over the wing faster
and under the wing slower,
and that's what
gives the plane lift.
- You're floating.
- The wings don't
move like a bird.
- It might just be magic.
- There's a reason why it
took human beings so long
to figure out how to fly.
You have to have
two characteristics.
One is you have
to be very logical
and rigorous in your
engineering designs.
At the same time, you have
to be incredibly reckless.
You have to be a
lunatic to put yourself
in one of these
flimsy contraptions.
- [Man] Aw, just like Icarus.
- The very idea of flight, it
was fascinating to everybody,
but most people would
say it can't be done.
Those who were prepared
to give it a try
couldn't wait to
get into the air.
- [Narrator] We're used to
cruising at 30,000 feet.
But it's the much lower
altitude of 50 feet
that makes commercial
aviation history.
Taking us on that seminal
ride is a motley duo
you've probably never heard of.
- Let's head to the beach.
- [Narrator] New
Year's Day, 1914,
3,000 people gather on a beach
in St. Petersburg, Florida.
- Everyone there, I
mean, regardless whether
they were hungover or
sober, had to be aware
that they're either gonna
witness the greatest thing ever,
or one of the biggest
tragedies ever.
- [Narrator] They've come to
see the Birdman, Tony Jannus.
A 24-year-old
playboy and showman,
he's promised to wow the crowds,
flying a Benoist XIV
across the bay to Tampa.
(bright music)
- Well, a Benoist airplane is
a boat with a set of wings,
and then a propeller driven by
an early internal
combustion engine,
and a tail which enabled you
to keep the whole
thing stabilized.
- [Narrator] The model XIV
was one of 17 flying machines
built by aircraft
parts manufacturer
and designer, Thomas Benoist.
- This Benoist fellow liked
to brag about how he used
the best materials and he
just used the best math.
It was all bluster, I mean,
these people did not know
what they were doing.
- [Narrator] St. Petersburg
Mayor Abraham C. Pheil
shells out $400 for
the only seat on board
and the bragging rights
to being the very first
paying airplane
passenger in the world.
- It's hard to understand how
insane you would have to be
to go on the first scheduled
commercial airline flight.
It was an experimental,
almost a toy,
I would say, this flying boat.
(bright music)
- An airboat?
- Oh, it's a sea plane.
- That doesn't look
particularly safe.
(laughs) No, thank you.
- I would definitely fly in
this thing just to try it.
- [Man] Watch and learn, mortal.
- [Narrator] After takeoff,
the Benoist reaches
a maximum cruising
altitude of 50 feet,
but soon, the engine sputters
and the boat plane
splashes down.
Not about to
disappoint the crowd,
Tony tinkers with the engine
and lifts off once more.
- It goes faster and faster
and faster, and like the,
the chickly chicken chickly
of the engine, and, you know,
finally it's in the air and,
you know, there's birds,
you know, whipping past, and
22 minutes of flight time,
you're all the way
across the bay.
- Once that airboat takes
its first paying passenger,
that's really the catalyst
for commercial airfare.
- [Narrator] The flight
service runs twice a day,
six days a week.
In four months, it takes
1,200 paying passengers
across Tampa Bay.
- Commercial aviation
was getting started,
but the machines were not
very powerful, not very fast,
and you couldn't
carry much weight.
(mischievous music)
- [Narrator] Early planes
made of wood and fabric
are used mainly for
transporting mail.
But when military aircraft
from the First World War
repurposed, commercial
flight gets a big boost.
- After this very sort
of experimental era,
we moved into the 30s.
By then, airplanes
were getting quite
a lot bigger and a lot
more sophisticated.
- So, in the 1930s,
there's a major leap
in aircraft technology.
Aircraft designers
have at their disposal
considerably better
internal combustion engines.
- [Narrator] Metal airframes
combined with power engines
enable planes to
fly faster, farther,
and through different climates.
- As the engines get
better and better,
you have aircraft
that really leapfrog
in their performance
capabilities.
- [Narrator] The
industry takes off.
In 1930, 6,000 Americans
travel by plane.
Four years later, that
number multiplies by 75
to reach 450,000 passengers.
Yet, despite the
technological advancements,
air travel is
strictly for the 1%.
- Ordinary people
couldn't hope to buy
an airline ticket to anywhere,
not short haul, and
certainly not long haul.
- [Narrator] A
coast-to-coast return flight
in depression-era America
would cost the equivalent
of $4,270 today.
And we're not talking flying
in first-class
conditions either.
- The airplane was
incredibly noisy
and there was no pressurization.
And by the time
you landed there,
the drumming sound in your ears
didn't stop for a
week after that.
- [Narrator] For the super rich,
there was another more
comfortable option
to cruise the skies.
- In the 1930s, the really
established and reliable,
and frankly, luxurious
way to do air travel
was by Zeppelin.
You had plenty of space.
You didn't have this crazy
vibrations and noise.
- [Narrator] Replicating
the exclusive
ocean liner experience,
a one-way ticket across
the Atlantic on an airship,
sets you back $400, or
more than $7,000 today.
- It was faster than
surface ships could go.
It's very stable.
- [Narrator] An airship
takes three to five days
to float from Europe
to the United States.
- And that seemed
like a much better bet
for the future of air travel.
- [Narrator] Until a catastrophe
spells the end of
airship travel.
(water splashing)
- [Man] Oh, the humanity
and all the (indistinct)
feeding around here.
I can't talk, ladies
and gentlemen.
- [Narrator] 35 Of 97 people
aboard the Hindenburg perish
when the Zeppelin catches fire
attempting to land in May 1937.
- It was such a
tragic, tragic event
and was so covered in the news
that we still associate the
word Hindenburg with disasters.
- [Narrator] Planes
are decidedly the
future of air travel.
And once the revolutionary
method of propulsion
comes on the scene,
there's no turning back.
(upbeat music)
- When you look at the
history of aviation,
there's before the jet engine
and after the jet engine.
(engine roars)
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] Jet
engine airplanes
are developed in the
30s and early 40s.
They first take to the
skies in World War II.
(upbeat music)
- Instead of using
blades to push the air,
they ingest the
air at the front,
drive it through sets
of whirling thin blades,
heat it up by injecting
and burning fuel,
and then propel it out the back,
so driving the plane
forward on pure thrust.
- [Narrator] Jets fly
faster, farther, higher,
and more efficiently than all
airplanes previously built.
After the war, a little-known
military aircraft manufacturer
called Boeing sees just
how commercial air travel
and company profits could
soar to new heights.
To make it happen, they
bet on number seven.
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] Nearing completion
in the Boeing planet, Seattle,
America's first jet transport
is a unit of glistening beauty.
- Boeing, thanks to working
on these jet-powered bombers,
had experience working
with these really
technologically
sophisticated engines
that were reliable and powerful.
- [Narrator] Boeing risks
a quarter of its net worth
on the 100 plus passenger jet.
That's a major leap
from a flying boat
with one traveler on board.
- [Narrator] Representing
$15 million investment,
the jet giant is 128 feet long
with a wing spread of 130 feet.
- [Narrator] The pressure
is on to sell the new fleet.
- The marketing
department at Boeing
started to develop an idea.
- [Narrator] Boeing's
divisions are classified
by blocks of 100, so the
new jet will be model 700,
but there's nothing
catchy about that name,
so the mad men in marketing
gamble on another seven.
(plane engine whirring)
- We're taking you aboard
the Boeing jet
Stratoliner, the 707,
to give you a preview
of airliner travel
of the future.
- [Narrator] The
move will give rise
to one of the most
successful brands in history,
and turn out to be
Boeing's lucky number.
- The future is bright,
and a real epitome
of that brightness
is the Boeing 707,
this wonderful machine that
is gonna transform everything.
- [Narrator] But it's
still early days.
Boeing doesn't know yet
how lucky number seven
will be for company fortunes.
Right now, it needs
an entire industry
to buy into its dream.
(belt swooshing)
(engine roaring)
It happens to be August 7th
and somebody's lucky day.
Tex Johnston climbs into the
prototype for the Boeing 707.
Once a barnstormer, now
Boeing ship test pilot,
Tex is known for a love
of all things cowboy.
(mid-tempo music)
- He had the great mustache
and the nerves of steel,
ice water in his
veins, demeanor.
And he, you know, was
given this really sturdy,
straight-flying,
reliable aircraft.
- [Narrator] Today's
mission is a no-nonsense fly
over Lake Washington.
The goal is to impress
the air industry execs
aboard Boeing President
Bill Allen's yacht.
(upbeat music)
250,000 onlookers are
also in attendance,
but they've come for
the speedboat races.
- Only Tex is planning
to upstage the spectacle
on the water with
his number one move.
- He just could not
resist the opportunity
to show the people on the
ground what this thing could do.
- [Narrator] Powering
up to 490 miles an hour,
Tex throws the 280,000-pound
passenger plane
into a barrel roll.
- [Man] He's a mad man.
- [Man] I like it.
- He takes the plane upside
down and everyone was shocked.
- He wasn't
authorized to do that.
It was not part of
the flight plan.
He just knew he could do it,
so he did it.
- [Tex] Yeehah!
- How confident was Tex Johnston
to do a barrel roll
in front of his boss?
What better way to sell a plane
than to make it stand
out from other planes?
- [Narrator] Boeing 707,
powered by Pratt and
Whitney jet engines,
and operated by Pan
American World Airways.
Its destination, Paris.
- [Narrator] Pan
Am orders 20 707s.
TWA, Qantas and other
airlines quickly follow suit.
- The Boeing 707 really
did kick off the jet age.
- [Narrator] Carrying
over 100 passengers
at up to 600 miles per hour,
the 707 cuts trans-Atlantic
flight times in half.
- So now we could go anywhere.
We could literally
go around the world
in roughly 23 or 24 hours.
- All of a sudden,
the world opens up.
(tires screeching)
- [Narrator] Historians of
aviation jokingly call this
the era of the Mach
1 movie theater
and the supersonic
whisky's hour.
- The 50s and 60s were really
the golden age of travel.
- There's plenty of leg
room, plenty of comfort,
everyone's relaxed.
It just seems like
the equivalent
of first-class traveling today.
- You had to be
able to afford it.
Air travel in the 50s,
adjusted for inflation,
was five times what it is today.
(engine roars)
- [Narrator] Today,
you'd pay about $800
for a round trip ticket
from New York to Paris.
Adjusted for inflation,
back in the 50s,
you'd be shelling out some
$4,000 for the same flight.
- It was expensive
enough that 64%
of airline passengers
were repeat passengers.
- Good afternoon,
welcome aboard.
- Thanks very much.
- You're welcome.
- [Narrator] So airlines
looked for creative ways
to lure the 64%
with deep pockets.
- Glamor was what
was going to sell it.
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] No carrier
pulled off luxury in the skies
better than Pan American.
- The genius of Pan
Am was to create
a powerful association
with freedom
and glamor and exoticism.
- [Man] When you fly out
into the world with Pan Am,
you're not going with an airline
(indistinct) country best
then visits the rest.
- Pan Am had a really
charismatic leader,
Juan Trippe, who had
endless imagination.
He was a good businessman,
but he was a dreamer, too.
- [Narrator] A
former naval aviator,
Juan Trippe launches
Pan Am in 1927.
Laser-focused on the number one,
he takes only three
years to turn Pan Am
into the world's
biggest airline.
- Pan Am was an
airline of firsts,
both cultural and technical.
It was the first to
serve food in the air,
and it was the first to offer
trans-Atlantic
passenger service.
It was the first airline to
bring the Beatles to the US.
- Pan Am as a brand pervaded
culture, both high and low.
- [Narrator] Pan Am
was the first carrier
to sell all-expense air tours
and create the tourist class
on international flights.
To lure passengers of
every income level,
all the air carriers lean
heavily on their staff.
(upbeat music)
- Each airline was kind of
trying to outcompete each other
with these really
beautiful, glamorous,
and at some point in time as
the sexual revolution happened,
overtly sexy stewardesses.
- [Narrator] Here's
what it takes
to be a stewardess in the 1960s.
Be at least 20 years old,
but not older than 27;
a height somewhere
between 5-foot-two,
but not above 5-foot-nine;
weigh less than 140 pounds;
must retire by age 32,
be unmarried and
definitely not pregnant.
- The idea was that air travel
is the fulfillment of a fantasy.
And a part of that
fantasy was sex.
(mellow music)
- Braniff Airlines had something
they called the AirStrip.
The stewardess would
begin the flight
wearing a jacket and a dress.
And with every meal
course that she served,
she took off one layer of
clothing until at the end,
she was wearing a leotard
with a sheer overlay.
- [Man] After dinner
on those long flights,
she'll slip into something
a little more comfortable.
- This looks like
you're hiring an escort.
- It's like mad man.
Oh, she's stripping more?
We get it, you're hot.
She took out her
skirt (chuckles).
- That told me nothing
about being on a plane.
- They don't make flight
attendants like that anymore.
They're actually
overworked and underpaid.
- [Narrator] There's no
mention of flying in the ad,
and something like this
would never work today.
But back in the 60s,
the innuendo-laden
campaign is a huge success.
Within a year,
business is up 50%.
(mellow music)
- And that kind of
wink and nod sexism
became much more
overt over the course
of the late 60s and early 70s,
culminating in the National
Airlines Fly Me campaign.
- [Woman] Everything
you've heard about us
Miami girls is true.
We're always on the move.
I'm Judy and I was born to fly.
- [Narrator] In 1972,
National Airlines
spends $ 9.5 million
marketing the bodies
of stewardesses, rather
than the flights.
- It was unbelievably sexist.
Their jobs were really dependent
on their willingness to
appear as sex objects.
- [Narrator] The highly
chauvinistic strategy works.
Ticket sales increased
23% in just one year.
That's more than double
the industry average.
- I'm Judy and I
was born to fly.
Fly me.
- [Announcer] Fly Judy.
Fly National.
- Sexism is not limited to land.
They were objectified
the same way in the air
as women were treated
in the workplace.
- [Narrator] And yet being a
stewardess was a coveted job.
It was the number
one career choice
among female high
school seniors in 1968.
- It's easy from the
vantage point of today
to forget just how
constrained choices were
for many American women
in the 50s and 60s.
- There's two ways you
could leave your small town.
You could join the military
or if you're a woman,
you could become a stewardess.
So not only can you
leave, but you can travel
to different states and
different countries.
- [Narrator] You might
think a pretty face
is what gets you
the job in the 60s,
but consider this.
In 1968, 266,000 women applied
for just 12,000
stewardess positions.
With one in 22 odds,
wow was a girl to stand
out from the crowd?
- Lynne Totten was from
small town in New York state.
She was the first woman in
her family to go to college.
She was the student
body president.
She was incredibly, you
know, bright and promising.
- [Narrator] Lynne is passionate
about her science studies,
and the events
gripping her country.
- She was engaged in the
social movements of the day,
and she wanted to see
these different places
that she'd read the
headlines about.
So when she graduated,
she appalled her parents
by saying that
she wanted to work
as a stewardess after college.
They thought that she
would be a teacher,
or work in a biology lab, or
get married and have a family.
- [Narrator] But
Lynne is unstoppable.
She heads to New York
City and makes a bee line
for the 59-storey standout
in the Big Apple skyline.
(mid-tempo music)
- The Pan Am building,
which casts a huge shadow,
she walks through the
lobby, up the stairs
to the conference
room where there were
all of these really
beautiful women in rose.
And they were incredibly
intimidating to her.
- There was a lot
of competition.
They were also expected to be
not only attractive physically,
but to be good
conversationalists.
- [Narrator]
Lynne's heart sinks.
For every hundred applicants,
no more than five get the job.
- She almost turned right
back around and walked out.
But she went to her interview
where she talked to a man,
very frankly, about what
she might be looking to do.
- [Narrator] Lynne is clear.
She's not interested in
finding a rich husband
or shopping in exotic locales.
After the interview,
Lynne is the only applicant
to be offered the job.
Her smarts, calm, and honesty
are what give her the edge.
- For all of the glamor that
Pan Am really projected,
what it really needed was
women who would be able
to handle such a huge
variety of situations.
- [Narrator] In the 1960s,
six to 8% of US college
graduates were women.
Yet 10% of Pan Am stewardesses
had gone to graduate school.
- Hi.
(plane engine roaring)
- But the tenants don't
get enough credit.
- Yes, they're serving us our
wine, which is very important,
but they're also
help keeping us safe.
- I mean, they should
honestly give you
an electrified (indistinct)
because you are kind of
hurt and (indistinct).
- Yeah, they should have some
like self-defense training.
You know, like people are
so rude to fight attendants.
- They are heroes.
They make sure that you live.
- United Flight
837 to Los Angeles.
The flight is not
ready for boarding.
Passengers only beyond the
(indistinct) room, please.
(bright music)
- [Narrator] In the late 60s,
all the carriers were
looking for sharp candidates,
like Lynne Totten,
to handle the increase
in passenger numbers.
- Aviation was
getting more efficient
and society was
becoming more prosperous
while disposable
incomes were going up.
So, they started
packing the seats.
- [Narrator] In 1970,
there were 383 million
air passenger
journeys worldwide.
To meet increasing demand,
Boeing introduces its
most iconic plane ever.
(mellow music)
- [Narrator] The mostest
of everything describes
the new giant of
commercial aviation,
the jetliner 747.
Contrasted with great
conventional aircraft,
the 747 will carry
490 passengers.
- [Man] Whoa.
- We see a lot of very big
airplanes around nowadays,
but at that time, the
leap from the 707,
about 150 passengers,
up to an aircraft
which could have held
400 to 500 passengers,
that was a massive leap.
- [Narrator] The 747
enters service in 1970
to great acclaim.
It's the first (indistinct)
commercial airliner,
the first to feature
stairs to an upper deck,
and the first jet
with overhead bins.
- With 747, Boeing hit a
grand slam home run again.
- [Narrator] The
legendary Boeing 747
is made of six million parts,
contains 140 miles of
wire, or the distance
between Philadelphia
and Washington, DC.
And with a wingspan of 195 feet,
the 747 is 35 feet wider
than a football field.
(mellow music)
- First of all, it's huge.
And it has a distinctive look.
It is unmistakable because
of this bulge on top.
You see a 747 from any distance
and you know exactly what it is.
- [Narrator] Dubbed
the queen of the skies
and the plane that
shrank the world,
the 747 flies 4,620 nautical
miles on a single tank of gas
and brings travelers to the
far corners of the planet.
- Flying became a bit more
affordable for ordinary people,
so larger numbers flew.
- [Narrator] With many more
people taking to the skies,
aircraft safety becomes
an increasing concern.
(airplane whirring)
- [Steward] I'm gonna ask
you to fasten your seatbelts.
- I don't have a fear of flying.
- I used to have
a fear of flying,
but now I'm sort
of jaded about it.
- I do have a fear of heights
and I have a fear
of outer space,
so it's weird that
plane flying is fine.
- Obviously during turbulence,
like when you do those
like vertical drops,
you definitely get the like
butterflies in your stomach.
- Oh, I hate flying,
probably 'cause
I have no control
over the situation.
You are literally in a
metal tube in the sky.
(plane engine roars)
- [Narrator] Aerophobia is
the most commonly held fear
in the United States.
- So many people are so uneasy
about what is mathematically
such a ridiculously safe
form of transportation.
One statistic has it
that 40% of air travelers
experience some kind
of anxiety or unease.
Obviously, that kind of
instinctual risk assessment
is not rational,
but the fact that so
many people experience it
just signals how
deep-seated it is.
(plane engine roars)
- [Narrator] If you
have a fear of flying,
falling from 10,000 feet
might be your worst nightmare,
but there can be far greater
dangers at ground level.
Christmas Eve, 1971,
17-year-old Juliane
Koepcke is flying
over the Peruvian Amazon
on board LANSA Flight 508.
40 minutes in and the turbo
prop flies into a thunderstorm.
The plane shakes violently.
Juliane watches helplessly as
lightning strikes the wing.
(lightning sizzles)
- Thunderstorms have violent
updrafts and downdrafts.
It can literally rip
an airliner to pieces.
- [Narrator] The
plane breaks apart.
Suddenly, the buckled-in teen
is falling from 10,000 feet
toward the jungle canopy below.
She blacks out before impact.
- When her plane
started to go down,
she was still
trapped in her seat
and had the seats on
either side of her empty,
which may have helped cushion
the fall, and she survived.
- [Narrator] Juliane wakes
up with broken bones,
a concussion, and
deep lacerations.
- And she then had to spend
11 days searching for safety.
- [Narrator] Picking her
way through the jungle,
Juliane dodges deadly snakes,
fends off swarms of insects,
and sidesteps hungry caimans.
- She had a broken collarbone,
was attacked by
parasites and maggots.
She eventually found her
way to a loggers encampment
and they were able to
get her to a hospital.
- [Narrator] Today,
airplanes are equipped
with weather radars, so pilots
can fly around storm systems.
- It's hard to really overstate
how safe air travel is.
- Back in the 1980s, your
chance of being on an airplane,
which had an accident that
killed even one person on board,
would've been about one in
one and a half a million.
Now, we're in a different
league altogether.
Safety has gotten better
by a multiple of about six.
(plane engine roars)
- [Narrator] The odds of
dying in an aircraft accident
on any airline are
one in 11 million.
The odds of getting hit by
lightning are one in 500,000.
- [Man] Huh, the numbers lie.
- [Narrator] It would take
one person 10,000 years
of daily flights before a
fatal crash would occur.
- So a flight every
day for 10,000 years,
how crazy is that?
- You have a bigger chance
than getting hit by lightning
than dying in a plane
crash, like, that's amazing.
- It shows you how
safe planes are.
- Well, now I don't wanna
go outside anymore, thanks.
(laughs) I'm just gonna stay
in a plane all the time.
- It's the technology
which has made
the biggest single difference.
Airplanes now, they're not just
technologically
beautifully engineered,
but they're smart.
There are computers
galore on board,
monitoring the equipment,
much better than people can.
- [Narrator] After deregulation
of the industry in 1978,
ticket prices fall and
air travel explodes.
New carriers spring up
through the 80s and 90s
to cater to the demand.
- They could charge
less, price competition.
You could start
thinking about things
like low-cost carriers,
things like People Express,
Southwest airlines.
- [Narrator] As budget
airlines trade comfort
for affordability,
air travel finally
becomes democratic.
From 1980 to 1989,
the number of
passengers worldwide
increases by 368 million.
- Flying is absolutely virgin
for everybody since then.
However, the actual experience
has gone somewhat downhill.
- The fact you only get
30 inches of leg room
obviously is disheartening.
- [Narrator] If that's
just too tight a squeeze,
there's always first class,
provided you can afford it.
- One of the most expensive
airline tickets right now
is Lufthansa from New York to
Hong Kong and it's $43,000,
which is also the starting
salary of many teachers
in the United States of America.
(indistinct) is
responsibility. ♪
- [Narrator] But back
in the 80s and 90s,
there was something
even more glamorous
than flying first-class.
(indistinct chattering)
It was riding on
board a rare bird
that harnessed the
power of seven,
to become the most exclusive
super jet in the skies.
- Some people would
say the Concorde
is the most beautiful
and impressive aircraft
that ever flew.
And I think those
people would be right.
(crowd cheering)
So the British and
the French, you know,
faced with this juggernaut
that Boeing was becoming,
thought, "How can we steal
a march in the Americans?
While the Americans
are building bigger,
we're gonna build faster."
- You have an airplane here,
which didn't just beat
the speed of sound;
it more than doubled it.
- [Narrator] Cruising
the skies at Mack 2,
twice the speed of sound,
the ultimate aircraft,
many believe in
commercial jet travel.
- [Narrator] At a
cost of $1.8 billion,
the Concorde program
was behind schedule
and grossly over-budget.
But when the super jet finally
enters commercial service
in 1976, the result was
utterly spectacular.
- When you push those
throttles forward,
the acceleration in
the small of your back
is like nothing else
that you can get
on any other civil airline.
- Oh, here we go.
You can really feel much
of the power in your back.
Concorde take off
at twice the speed
of a normal aircraft,
250 miles per hour.
It is amazing, my
ears are popping.
(plane engine whirring)
- [Narrator] Concorde
breaks the sound barrier
at 770 miles an hour.
Its cruising speed is
1,350 miles per hour,
Mach 2, or 23 miles per minute.
And it made its fastest
trans-Atlantic crossing
in two hours, 52 minutes
and 59 seconds in 1996.
- You're flying much higher
than normal commercial aviation.
You could see the
curvature of the Earth
and the sky was dark overhead,
almost like you were
traveling in space.
- [Narrator] Cruising
at 60,000 feet,
Concorde cuts air travel
time by more than half.
- Everybody in there was
somebody famous or rich.
- [Narrator] In the late 1990s,
a return ticket to fly
in this rarefied air
sets you back $12,000
or $18,000 today.
Only the creme de
la creme of pilots
are permitted to fly this bird.
- It had to be flown different.
It had a thousand
little dials everywhere.
It took an incredibly competent
and well-trained crew to fly.
- [Narrator] Piloting the super
jet was a sought-after gig,
but the failure rate among
captain candidates was 50%.
- Flying Concorde was
not an easy thing to do.
You've got a whole load of
passengers down the back
who don't want any shocks,
and they don't want you to
spill their gin and tonic.
- [Narrator] For 27
years, the supersonic jet
was the coolest, fastest,
and most exclusive commercial
aircraft in the skies.
- But those things have cost.
Notably, it made a sonic boom,
so it created this giant
earth-shattering rumble
as it passed overhead.
And it also burned
tremendous amounts of fuel.
- Concorde was not good
for the environment.
Maybe in the future,
we'll see a return
to this kind of
hyper-quick travel,
if there's a way to do it,
where it's fuel-efficient.
- [Narrator] After Concorde
is retired in 2003,
supersonic air travel
becomes a thing of the past.
Or maybe not.
(indistinct chattering)
In 2021, United Airlines
announces the purchase
of 15 supersonic passenger
planes from a Colorado startup.
Boom Supersonic
is more than happy
to show off their
fancy new jet online.
- I would love to see
travel expediated,
so those 23-hour flights
are now five or six hours.
Those six-hour flights are
now are 30, 40 minutes.
- Talking about a supersonic
business jet technologically,
it would be possible.
A supersonic airliner
as big as Concorde
or bigger than Concorde, all
the technological challenges,
they're still there
to be overcome.
- You can't get around with it.
If you're gonna go faster
than the speed of sound,
you're gonna make a boom.
- So you can't fly it
over populated areas.
- [Narrator] A
jackhammer creates
about 100 decibels of noise.
Human ear drums rupture
at 150 decibels.
(man screams)
A sonic boom exceeds
200 decibels.
It's enough power
to kill a person.
(man groans)
(mid-tempo music)
- If you wanna go really fast,
you have to burn a lot of fuel.
And if you're
building your aircraft
around burning tremendous
amounts of fossil fuel,
that's a problem.
- I'm not investing my money
in a supersonic
project at the moment.
I am not.
(mid-tempo music)
- [Narrator] The
business of aviation
is not for the risk-averse.
You need more than lucky
numbers to stay in this game.
- It's a volatile business.
It takes nerves of
steel to run an airline.
- [Narrator] Preparing
for the unpredictable
comes with the territory.
Yet no airline could
have quite foreseen
a sleeping giant beneath
a glacier in Iceland.
After a 177-year long nap
and some 300
earthquakes, he wakes up.
- [Man] From 10 miles
away, it's awe-inspiring.
From two miles,
it's intimidating.
From just a few hundred
yards, it's frightening.
- [Narrator] Soon, his
tongue-twister name
is on everybody's lips.
Well, sort of.
- Eyjafjallajokull.
- Eyjafjallajokull.
- Eyjafjallajokulla.
- What?
- Eyjafjallajokull.
- [Reporter] The latest
images of the volcano
in Eyjafjallajokull.
- An easy name to say.
Eyjafjallajokull.
- It was kind of
an obscure volcano.
It wasn't particularly
huge or anything,
but the peculiarities of the
geology or what have you,
this thing sent
tiny shards of glass
high up into the stratosphere.
- [Narrator] On
April 14th, 2010,
Eyjafjallajokull, nailed it,
unleashes a plume
of volcanic ash
that rises 6.2
miles into the sky.
We're talking 12 of the
tallest buildings in the world,
stacked atop one another.
- At that time, the jet stream
was blowing right over Iceland,
and it was carrying all
of these tiny shards
of floating glass over Europe,
over the entirety of
Western Europe and beyond.
- [Narrator] The debris
drifts and spreads
across 2.7 million square miles,
some 10 times the size of Texas.
- Old pilots know that volcanic
ash in the air is dangerous,
particularly for jet engines.
It's very abrasive.
- It is like
sandblasting your engine,
and turbines, they are
incredibly reliable.
They are marvels, but they
cannot be screwed with.
If you throw volcanic
dust into it,
you will destroy a
multi-million dollar engine
in a heartbeat.
- [Narrator] For seven
days, planes across Europe
sit idle on the tarmac.
10 million grounded passengers
shake their fists
at mother nature.
- The 2010 Iceland
volcano explosion
cost airlines $1.7 billion.
(cash register tinkling)
- [Narrator] Among
those grounded
was a familiar face
to United Airlines.
- It's not about
the places I go.
It's about the people I meet.
- [Narrator] American Tom Stuker
is the world's
most frequent flyer
with 21 million miles flown.
That's like going around
the equator 844 times.
Tom pays for all his trips,
including the 350 he's
made to Australia,
and then donates his
frequent flyer points.
- Air travel covers
such long distances
it's fairly sensitive
to changes in weather,
or even local events
like disease outbreaks
or political coups.
- [Narrator] Early in 2020,
Tom and the entire industry
are blindsided again,
this time, an invisible
airborne villain
100 nanometers in
diameters, to blame.
(electronic swooshing)
(ominous music)
- COVID 19, this pandemic
has really hit aviation hard.
(ominous music)
I think there are
no other industries
that have been hit harder.
- People weren't
allowed to travel.
So all the industries
and all the jobs
associated with the airline
industry are being affected.
- At its worst stage,
about 90% of aviation
stopped, of civil aviation.
- [Narrator] As
COVID 19 spreads,
passenger journeys drop
from 4.5 billion in 2019
to 1.8 billion in 2020.
That's a $370 billion
loss for the airlines,
and another $115 billion
hit to the airports.
(taut music)
- Things have
happen all the time
that can cause tremendous loss
and there's nothing
they can do about it.
But ultimately, air travel
will continue as it has,
which is to grow
and grow and grow.
- I don't have any doubt
that people will recover
their wanderlust and their
wish to travel by air
once the pandemic is under
control or even behind us.
- [Narrator] No stranger
to the ups and downs
of the business, Boeing
predicts a full recovery
within two and a half years.
- Domestic aviation in the USA
is rebounding
surprisingly quickly.
(bright music)
- [Narrator] On June 27th, 2021,
2,167,380 passengers
passed through US airports.
It's the busiest
day since air travel
came to a screeching
halt in March of 2020.
- Air travel connects countries.
It connects citizens.
- [Narrator] What
starts as daredevils
in their flying machines
morphs into an exclusive
form of transportation,
and then evolves into
the most sophisticated
and safe way for everyone
to travel the world.
- [Steward] On behalf
of the flight crew,
thank you for flying with
us and have a pleasant day.
- Air travel equals freedom.
- Air travel makes
the world smaller.
- Air travel is a
boring experience
that allows you to
do something awesome.
- Air travel equals dirtier
air and more pollutants,
but it also equals
beach vacation.
- It doesn't take a lot
to get me on a plane.
It usually takes two
Valiums and a glass of wine.
- Air travel.
(plane engine roaring)
(upbeat music)
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] Have you ever
wondered how many people
are in the sky right now?
- Um.
- Probably more than I imagine.
- Are we including
trapeze artists
and people launched
from catapults?
- 50,000.
- Half a million.
- A million people.
- [Narrator] On any given
day, you're likely to find
about 1.2 million
people in the air.
- Now, that is a
lot of airplanes.
- Okay, that's a lot
of people (laughs).
- [Narrator] 2019
Was the busiest year
in the history of air travel.
- If you've ever seen
any of the flight charts
that show all the planes in
the air at the same time,
there's thousands and thousands.
- [Narrator] How did we go
from one brave passenger?
- It's hard to
understand how insane
you would have to
be (man screams)
to go on the first scheduled
commercial airline flight.
- [Narrator] To 40
million annual flights.
- [Flight Attendant] Here we go.
It's almost time to fly.
- [Narrator] It
takes wanderlust.
- I don't think there
are any human beings
who haven't dreamt of flying.
- [Narrator] Innovation.
- The jet engine
changes the whole game.
- [Narrator] Risque marketing.
- Each airline was kind of
trying to outcompete each other
with these really
beautiful stewardesses.
- The idea was that air
travel is the fulfillment
of a fantasy, and a part
of that fantasy was sex.
- [Narrator] And the
rise of coach class.
- The fact you only get
30 inches of leg room.
- It's a lot more democratic.
- [Narrator] This is
a story of firsts,
of millions, of billions.
- The 2010 Iceland
volcano explosion
cost airlines $1.7 billion.
- [Narrator] And the
lucky number seven.
This is air travel.
- Please fasten your seatbelt.
- [Narrator] Buckle up.
(upbeat music)
(plane engine roaring)
- Air travel has connected
people, culture, societies,
has allowed people to
travel quicker, faster,
more efficiently than we've
ever would've expected.
Air travel has
revolutionized everything.
- We need numbers to help
us imagine air travel.
What is the volume of luggage
getting moved every day?
What is the longest flight?
How many people are getting
onto an airplane every day?
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] To grasp
the true scope and reach
of air travel today,
look no further
than Hartsfield-Jackson
Atlanta International Airport.
- Atlanta is the world's
busiest passenger airport.
- [Narrator] More than
110 million passengers
come through its
doors every year.
- There's always a running
joke that no matter
where you are
traveling in the world,
that if there's a
layover, it's Atlanta.
- [Narrator] But ATL
would never have taken off
without an obscure
risk-taking druggist
and the magic of number nine.
(upbeat music)
In 1888, Atlanta
pharmacist Asa Candler
buys the secret recipe
to a new soft drink
with nine mysterious
ingredients.
He successfully markets
the syrupy tonic
and founds the
Cola-Cola Company.
Within two decades, it's
America's favorite soda.
- [Woman] Yum.
- [Narrator] But Asa's got
a thirst for a new venture.
With the profits
of his soda empire,
he gambles $77,674, or two
million in today's money,
on 287 acres of marshland.
- [Man] It's a fixer-upper.
- [Narrator] Then drains
the whole thing dry.
- In 1909, Asa Candler opens
up a raceway in Atlanta.
- [Narrator] Thousands flock
to see car races and air shows.
But after two seasons,
the novelty wears off.
- The raceway in Atlanta
is way ahead of its time
because the car is
just being introduced
to modern America and
middle-class America.
- [Narrator] The
speedway is a flop.
Asa's big idea is as
flat as stale soda pop.
The track sits
abandoned till 1919
when Asa lets pilots use
it as a landing strip.
A few years later, the city
officially takes it over.
- If Asa Candler could see
what happened to his vision,
his mind would explode.
(plane engine roars)
So, the land is now home to
Atlanta Hartsfield Airport.
It's a tiny portion of what
is the sprawling system
of runways and taxiways.
- [Narrator] In less than a
century, Asa's original airfield
multiplied by 16 to now
cover 7.3 square miles.
(upbeat music)
- The Atlanta airport
is absolutely huge.
Every time I've
flown through it,
my connection is in
a different terminal
on the other side
of the airport,
and you have to ride a tram
to get from one
place to the other.
- [Narrator] Hartsfield-Jackson
airport covers 4,700 acres,
and an average of
2,700 planes take off
and land here every single day.
(upbeat music)
- The airport itself
is an experience.
I mean, literally, you can do
everything at the terminal.
- It's like a fully-formed
city in itself.
I mean, you've got restaurants,
hotels, transportation hubs.
- They have little churches.
They have their
own police force.
They have public
transit that moves you
from one end to the other.
And it's all behind
a security wall.
- [Narrator] 63,000
people are needed
to run Atlanta's airport,
making it the number one
employer in the state.
(film reel clicking)
(whimsical music)
All airports owe a debt to
the pioneers of aviation,
but you'd be surprised
to discover some
aren't the usual suspects
from our textbooks.
- Aviation always starts with
the Wright brothers in 1903,
but people were
trying, experimenting,
learning to fly
long before that.
- [Narrator] From Leonard
da Vinci's 500 visions
of flying machines, to
the study of aerodynamics
by mathematicians like
Huygens or Newton.
- [Man] Come on, come on.
- [Narrator] Humans have
been attempting flight
for centuries.
- [Man] Oh, no.
- [Man] If it works,
it ain't stupid.
- I know nothing
of aerodynamics.
I don't know how
somebody figured it
out in the first place.
- The wheels come up and then
it's autopilot, isn't it?
- I should know
this as an engineer.
Air that flows
faster has less lift
than air that flows slower,
so the design of the wing
causes air to flow
over the wing faster
and under the wing slower,
and that's what
gives the plane lift.
- You're floating.
- The wings don't
move like a bird.
- It might just be magic.
- There's a reason why it
took human beings so long
to figure out how to fly.
You have to have
two characteristics.
One is you have
to be very logical
and rigorous in your
engineering designs.
At the same time, you have
to be incredibly reckless.
You have to be a
lunatic to put yourself
in one of these
flimsy contraptions.
- [Man] Aw, just like Icarus.
- The very idea of flight, it
was fascinating to everybody,
but most people would
say it can't be done.
Those who were prepared
to give it a try
couldn't wait to
get into the air.
- [Narrator] We're used to
cruising at 30,000 feet.
But it's the much lower
altitude of 50 feet
that makes commercial
aviation history.
Taking us on that seminal
ride is a motley duo
you've probably never heard of.
- Let's head to the beach.
- [Narrator] New
Year's Day, 1914,
3,000 people gather on a beach
in St. Petersburg, Florida.
- Everyone there, I
mean, regardless whether
they were hungover or
sober, had to be aware
that they're either gonna
witness the greatest thing ever,
or one of the biggest
tragedies ever.
- [Narrator] They've come to
see the Birdman, Tony Jannus.
A 24-year-old
playboy and showman,
he's promised to wow the crowds,
flying a Benoist XIV
across the bay to Tampa.
(bright music)
- Well, a Benoist airplane is
a boat with a set of wings,
and then a propeller driven by
an early internal
combustion engine,
and a tail which enabled you
to keep the whole
thing stabilized.
- [Narrator] The model XIV
was one of 17 flying machines
built by aircraft
parts manufacturer
and designer, Thomas Benoist.
- This Benoist fellow liked
to brag about how he used
the best materials and he
just used the best math.
It was all bluster, I mean,
these people did not know
what they were doing.
- [Narrator] St. Petersburg
Mayor Abraham C. Pheil
shells out $400 for
the only seat on board
and the bragging rights
to being the very first
paying airplane
passenger in the world.
- It's hard to understand how
insane you would have to be
to go on the first scheduled
commercial airline flight.
It was an experimental,
almost a toy,
I would say, this flying boat.
(bright music)
- An airboat?
- Oh, it's a sea plane.
- That doesn't look
particularly safe.
(laughs) No, thank you.
- I would definitely fly in
this thing just to try it.
- [Man] Watch and learn, mortal.
- [Narrator] After takeoff,
the Benoist reaches
a maximum cruising
altitude of 50 feet,
but soon, the engine sputters
and the boat plane
splashes down.
Not about to
disappoint the crowd,
Tony tinkers with the engine
and lifts off once more.
- It goes faster and faster
and faster, and like the,
the chickly chicken chickly
of the engine, and, you know,
finally it's in the air and,
you know, there's birds,
you know, whipping past, and
22 minutes of flight time,
you're all the way
across the bay.
- Once that airboat takes
its first paying passenger,
that's really the catalyst
for commercial airfare.
- [Narrator] The flight
service runs twice a day,
six days a week.
In four months, it takes
1,200 paying passengers
across Tampa Bay.
- Commercial aviation
was getting started,
but the machines were not
very powerful, not very fast,
and you couldn't
carry much weight.
(mischievous music)
- [Narrator] Early planes
made of wood and fabric
are used mainly for
transporting mail.
But when military aircraft
from the First World War
repurposed, commercial
flight gets a big boost.
- After this very sort
of experimental era,
we moved into the 30s.
By then, airplanes
were getting quite
a lot bigger and a lot
more sophisticated.
- So, in the 1930s,
there's a major leap
in aircraft technology.
Aircraft designers
have at their disposal
considerably better
internal combustion engines.
- [Narrator] Metal airframes
combined with power engines
enable planes to
fly faster, farther,
and through different climates.
- As the engines get
better and better,
you have aircraft
that really leapfrog
in their performance
capabilities.
- [Narrator] The
industry takes off.
In 1930, 6,000 Americans
travel by plane.
Four years later, that
number multiplies by 75
to reach 450,000 passengers.
Yet, despite the
technological advancements,
air travel is
strictly for the 1%.
- Ordinary people
couldn't hope to buy
an airline ticket to anywhere,
not short haul, and
certainly not long haul.
- [Narrator] A
coast-to-coast return flight
in depression-era America
would cost the equivalent
of $4,270 today.
And we're not talking flying
in first-class
conditions either.
- The airplane was
incredibly noisy
and there was no pressurization.
And by the time
you landed there,
the drumming sound in your ears
didn't stop for a
week after that.
- [Narrator] For the super rich,
there was another more
comfortable option
to cruise the skies.
- In the 1930s, the really
established and reliable,
and frankly, luxurious
way to do air travel
was by Zeppelin.
You had plenty of space.
You didn't have this crazy
vibrations and noise.
- [Narrator] Replicating
the exclusive
ocean liner experience,
a one-way ticket across
the Atlantic on an airship,
sets you back $400, or
more than $7,000 today.
- It was faster than
surface ships could go.
It's very stable.
- [Narrator] An airship
takes three to five days
to float from Europe
to the United States.
- And that seemed
like a much better bet
for the future of air travel.
- [Narrator] Until a catastrophe
spells the end of
airship travel.
(water splashing)
- [Man] Oh, the humanity
and all the (indistinct)
feeding around here.
I can't talk, ladies
and gentlemen.
- [Narrator] 35 Of 97 people
aboard the Hindenburg perish
when the Zeppelin catches fire
attempting to land in May 1937.
- It was such a
tragic, tragic event
and was so covered in the news
that we still associate the
word Hindenburg with disasters.
- [Narrator] Planes
are decidedly the
future of air travel.
And once the revolutionary
method of propulsion
comes on the scene,
there's no turning back.
(upbeat music)
- When you look at the
history of aviation,
there's before the jet engine
and after the jet engine.
(engine roars)
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] Jet
engine airplanes
are developed in the
30s and early 40s.
They first take to the
skies in World War II.
(upbeat music)
- Instead of using
blades to push the air,
they ingest the
air at the front,
drive it through sets
of whirling thin blades,
heat it up by injecting
and burning fuel,
and then propel it out the back,
so driving the plane
forward on pure thrust.
- [Narrator] Jets fly
faster, farther, higher,
and more efficiently than all
airplanes previously built.
After the war, a little-known
military aircraft manufacturer
called Boeing sees just
how commercial air travel
and company profits could
soar to new heights.
To make it happen, they
bet on number seven.
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] Nearing completion
in the Boeing planet, Seattle,
America's first jet transport
is a unit of glistening beauty.
- Boeing, thanks to working
on these jet-powered bombers,
had experience working
with these really
technologically
sophisticated engines
that were reliable and powerful.
- [Narrator] Boeing risks
a quarter of its net worth
on the 100 plus passenger jet.
That's a major leap
from a flying boat
with one traveler on board.
- [Narrator] Representing
$15 million investment,
the jet giant is 128 feet long
with a wing spread of 130 feet.
- [Narrator] The pressure
is on to sell the new fleet.
- The marketing
department at Boeing
started to develop an idea.
- [Narrator] Boeing's
divisions are classified
by blocks of 100, so the
new jet will be model 700,
but there's nothing
catchy about that name,
so the mad men in marketing
gamble on another seven.
(plane engine whirring)
- We're taking you aboard
the Boeing jet
Stratoliner, the 707,
to give you a preview
of airliner travel
of the future.
- [Narrator] The
move will give rise
to one of the most
successful brands in history,
and turn out to be
Boeing's lucky number.
- The future is bright,
and a real epitome
of that brightness
is the Boeing 707,
this wonderful machine that
is gonna transform everything.
- [Narrator] But it's
still early days.
Boeing doesn't know yet
how lucky number seven
will be for company fortunes.
Right now, it needs
an entire industry
to buy into its dream.
(belt swooshing)
(engine roaring)
It happens to be August 7th
and somebody's lucky day.
Tex Johnston climbs into the
prototype for the Boeing 707.
Once a barnstormer, now
Boeing ship test pilot,
Tex is known for a love
of all things cowboy.
(mid-tempo music)
- He had the great mustache
and the nerves of steel,
ice water in his
veins, demeanor.
And he, you know, was
given this really sturdy,
straight-flying,
reliable aircraft.
- [Narrator] Today's
mission is a no-nonsense fly
over Lake Washington.
The goal is to impress
the air industry execs
aboard Boeing President
Bill Allen's yacht.
(upbeat music)
250,000 onlookers are
also in attendance,
but they've come for
the speedboat races.
- Only Tex is planning
to upstage the spectacle
on the water with
his number one move.
- He just could not
resist the opportunity
to show the people on the
ground what this thing could do.
- [Narrator] Powering
up to 490 miles an hour,
Tex throws the 280,000-pound
passenger plane
into a barrel roll.
- [Man] He's a mad man.
- [Man] I like it.
- He takes the plane upside
down and everyone was shocked.
- He wasn't
authorized to do that.
It was not part of
the flight plan.
He just knew he could do it,
so he did it.
- [Tex] Yeehah!
- How confident was Tex Johnston
to do a barrel roll
in front of his boss?
What better way to sell a plane
than to make it stand
out from other planes?
- [Narrator] Boeing 707,
powered by Pratt and
Whitney jet engines,
and operated by Pan
American World Airways.
Its destination, Paris.
- [Narrator] Pan
Am orders 20 707s.
TWA, Qantas and other
airlines quickly follow suit.
- The Boeing 707 really
did kick off the jet age.
- [Narrator] Carrying
over 100 passengers
at up to 600 miles per hour,
the 707 cuts trans-Atlantic
flight times in half.
- So now we could go anywhere.
We could literally
go around the world
in roughly 23 or 24 hours.
- All of a sudden,
the world opens up.
(tires screeching)
- [Narrator] Historians of
aviation jokingly call this
the era of the Mach
1 movie theater
and the supersonic
whisky's hour.
- The 50s and 60s were really
the golden age of travel.
- There's plenty of leg
room, plenty of comfort,
everyone's relaxed.
It just seems like
the equivalent
of first-class traveling today.
- You had to be
able to afford it.
Air travel in the 50s,
adjusted for inflation,
was five times what it is today.
(engine roars)
- [Narrator] Today,
you'd pay about $800
for a round trip ticket
from New York to Paris.
Adjusted for inflation,
back in the 50s,
you'd be shelling out some
$4,000 for the same flight.
- It was expensive
enough that 64%
of airline passengers
were repeat passengers.
- Good afternoon,
welcome aboard.
- Thanks very much.
- You're welcome.
- [Narrator] So airlines
looked for creative ways
to lure the 64%
with deep pockets.
- Glamor was what
was going to sell it.
(upbeat music)
- [Narrator] No carrier
pulled off luxury in the skies
better than Pan American.
- The genius of Pan
Am was to create
a powerful association
with freedom
and glamor and exoticism.
- [Man] When you fly out
into the world with Pan Am,
you're not going with an airline
(indistinct) country best
then visits the rest.
- Pan Am had a really
charismatic leader,
Juan Trippe, who had
endless imagination.
He was a good businessman,
but he was a dreamer, too.
- [Narrator] A
former naval aviator,
Juan Trippe launches
Pan Am in 1927.
Laser-focused on the number one,
he takes only three
years to turn Pan Am
into the world's
biggest airline.
- Pan Am was an
airline of firsts,
both cultural and technical.
It was the first to
serve food in the air,
and it was the first to offer
trans-Atlantic
passenger service.
It was the first airline to
bring the Beatles to the US.
- Pan Am as a brand pervaded
culture, both high and low.
- [Narrator] Pan Am
was the first carrier
to sell all-expense air tours
and create the tourist class
on international flights.
To lure passengers of
every income level,
all the air carriers lean
heavily on their staff.
(upbeat music)
- Each airline was kind of
trying to outcompete each other
with these really
beautiful, glamorous,
and at some point in time as
the sexual revolution happened,
overtly sexy stewardesses.
- [Narrator] Here's
what it takes
to be a stewardess in the 1960s.
Be at least 20 years old,
but not older than 27;
a height somewhere
between 5-foot-two,
but not above 5-foot-nine;
weigh less than 140 pounds;
must retire by age 32,
be unmarried and
definitely not pregnant.
- The idea was that air travel
is the fulfillment of a fantasy.
And a part of that
fantasy was sex.
(mellow music)
- Braniff Airlines had something
they called the AirStrip.
The stewardess would
begin the flight
wearing a jacket and a dress.
And with every meal
course that she served,
she took off one layer of
clothing until at the end,
she was wearing a leotard
with a sheer overlay.
- [Man] After dinner
on those long flights,
she'll slip into something
a little more comfortable.
- This looks like
you're hiring an escort.
- It's like mad man.
Oh, she's stripping more?
We get it, you're hot.
She took out her
skirt (chuckles).
- That told me nothing
about being on a plane.
- They don't make flight
attendants like that anymore.
They're actually
overworked and underpaid.
- [Narrator] There's no
mention of flying in the ad,
and something like this
would never work today.
But back in the 60s,
the innuendo-laden
campaign is a huge success.
Within a year,
business is up 50%.
(mellow music)
- And that kind of
wink and nod sexism
became much more
overt over the course
of the late 60s and early 70s,
culminating in the National
Airlines Fly Me campaign.
- [Woman] Everything
you've heard about us
Miami girls is true.
We're always on the move.
I'm Judy and I was born to fly.
- [Narrator] In 1972,
National Airlines
spends $ 9.5 million
marketing the bodies
of stewardesses, rather
than the flights.
- It was unbelievably sexist.
Their jobs were really dependent
on their willingness to
appear as sex objects.
- [Narrator] The highly
chauvinistic strategy works.
Ticket sales increased
23% in just one year.
That's more than double
the industry average.
- I'm Judy and I
was born to fly.
Fly me.
- [Announcer] Fly Judy.
Fly National.
- Sexism is not limited to land.
They were objectified
the same way in the air
as women were treated
in the workplace.
- [Narrator] And yet being a
stewardess was a coveted job.
It was the number
one career choice
among female high
school seniors in 1968.
- It's easy from the
vantage point of today
to forget just how
constrained choices were
for many American women
in the 50s and 60s.
- There's two ways you
could leave your small town.
You could join the military
or if you're a woman,
you could become a stewardess.
So not only can you
leave, but you can travel
to different states and
different countries.
- [Narrator] You might
think a pretty face
is what gets you
the job in the 60s,
but consider this.
In 1968, 266,000 women applied
for just 12,000
stewardess positions.
With one in 22 odds,
wow was a girl to stand
out from the crowd?
- Lynne Totten was from
small town in New York state.
She was the first woman in
her family to go to college.
She was the student
body president.
She was incredibly, you
know, bright and promising.
- [Narrator] Lynne is passionate
about her science studies,
and the events
gripping her country.
- She was engaged in the
social movements of the day,
and she wanted to see
these different places
that she'd read the
headlines about.
So when she graduated,
she appalled her parents
by saying that
she wanted to work
as a stewardess after college.
They thought that she
would be a teacher,
or work in a biology lab, or
get married and have a family.
- [Narrator] But
Lynne is unstoppable.
She heads to New York
City and makes a bee line
for the 59-storey standout
in the Big Apple skyline.
(mid-tempo music)
- The Pan Am building,
which casts a huge shadow,
she walks through the
lobby, up the stairs
to the conference
room where there were
all of these really
beautiful women in rose.
And they were incredibly
intimidating to her.
- There was a lot
of competition.
They were also expected to be
not only attractive physically,
but to be good
conversationalists.
- [Narrator]
Lynne's heart sinks.
For every hundred applicants,
no more than five get the job.
- She almost turned right
back around and walked out.
But she went to her interview
where she talked to a man,
very frankly, about what
she might be looking to do.
- [Narrator] Lynne is clear.
She's not interested in
finding a rich husband
or shopping in exotic locales.
After the interview,
Lynne is the only applicant
to be offered the job.
Her smarts, calm, and honesty
are what give her the edge.
- For all of the glamor that
Pan Am really projected,
what it really needed was
women who would be able
to handle such a huge
variety of situations.
- [Narrator] In the 1960s,
six to 8% of US college
graduates were women.
Yet 10% of Pan Am stewardesses
had gone to graduate school.
- Hi.
(plane engine roaring)
- But the tenants don't
get enough credit.
- Yes, they're serving us our
wine, which is very important,
but they're also
help keeping us safe.
- I mean, they should
honestly give you
an electrified (indistinct)
because you are kind of
hurt and (indistinct).
- Yeah, they should have some
like self-defense training.
You know, like people are
so rude to fight attendants.
- They are heroes.
They make sure that you live.
- United Flight
837 to Los Angeles.
The flight is not
ready for boarding.
Passengers only beyond the
(indistinct) room, please.
(bright music)
- [Narrator] In the late 60s,
all the carriers were
looking for sharp candidates,
like Lynne Totten,
to handle the increase
in passenger numbers.
- Aviation was
getting more efficient
and society was
becoming more prosperous
while disposable
incomes were going up.
So, they started
packing the seats.
- [Narrator] In 1970,
there were 383 million
air passenger
journeys worldwide.
To meet increasing demand,
Boeing introduces its
most iconic plane ever.
(mellow music)
- [Narrator] The mostest
of everything describes
the new giant of
commercial aviation,
the jetliner 747.
Contrasted with great
conventional aircraft,
the 747 will carry
490 passengers.
- [Man] Whoa.
- We see a lot of very big
airplanes around nowadays,
but at that time, the
leap from the 707,
about 150 passengers,
up to an aircraft
which could have held
400 to 500 passengers,
that was a massive leap.
- [Narrator] The 747
enters service in 1970
to great acclaim.
It's the first (indistinct)
commercial airliner,
the first to feature
stairs to an upper deck,
and the first jet
with overhead bins.
- With 747, Boeing hit a
grand slam home run again.
- [Narrator] The
legendary Boeing 747
is made of six million parts,
contains 140 miles of
wire, or the distance
between Philadelphia
and Washington, DC.
And with a wingspan of 195 feet,
the 747 is 35 feet wider
than a football field.
(mellow music)
- First of all, it's huge.
And it has a distinctive look.
It is unmistakable because
of this bulge on top.
You see a 747 from any distance
and you know exactly what it is.
- [Narrator] Dubbed
the queen of the skies
and the plane that
shrank the world,
the 747 flies 4,620 nautical
miles on a single tank of gas
and brings travelers to the
far corners of the planet.
- Flying became a bit more
affordable for ordinary people,
so larger numbers flew.
- [Narrator] With many more
people taking to the skies,
aircraft safety becomes
an increasing concern.
(airplane whirring)
- [Steward] I'm gonna ask
you to fasten your seatbelts.
- I don't have a fear of flying.
- I used to have
a fear of flying,
but now I'm sort
of jaded about it.
- I do have a fear of heights
and I have a fear
of outer space,
so it's weird that
plane flying is fine.
- Obviously during turbulence,
like when you do those
like vertical drops,
you definitely get the like
butterflies in your stomach.
- Oh, I hate flying,
probably 'cause
I have no control
over the situation.
You are literally in a
metal tube in the sky.
(plane engine roars)
- [Narrator] Aerophobia is
the most commonly held fear
in the United States.
- So many people are so uneasy
about what is mathematically
such a ridiculously safe
form of transportation.
One statistic has it
that 40% of air travelers
experience some kind
of anxiety or unease.
Obviously, that kind of
instinctual risk assessment
is not rational,
but the fact that so
many people experience it
just signals how
deep-seated it is.
(plane engine roars)
- [Narrator] If you
have a fear of flying,
falling from 10,000 feet
might be your worst nightmare,
but there can be far greater
dangers at ground level.
Christmas Eve, 1971,
17-year-old Juliane
Koepcke is flying
over the Peruvian Amazon
on board LANSA Flight 508.
40 minutes in and the turbo
prop flies into a thunderstorm.
The plane shakes violently.
Juliane watches helplessly as
lightning strikes the wing.
(lightning sizzles)
- Thunderstorms have violent
updrafts and downdrafts.
It can literally rip
an airliner to pieces.
- [Narrator] The
plane breaks apart.
Suddenly, the buckled-in teen
is falling from 10,000 feet
toward the jungle canopy below.
She blacks out before impact.
- When her plane
started to go down,
she was still
trapped in her seat
and had the seats on
either side of her empty,
which may have helped cushion
the fall, and she survived.
- [Narrator] Juliane wakes
up with broken bones,
a concussion, and
deep lacerations.
- And she then had to spend
11 days searching for safety.
- [Narrator] Picking her
way through the jungle,
Juliane dodges deadly snakes,
fends off swarms of insects,
and sidesteps hungry caimans.
- She had a broken collarbone,
was attacked by
parasites and maggots.
She eventually found her
way to a loggers encampment
and they were able to
get her to a hospital.
- [Narrator] Today,
airplanes are equipped
with weather radars, so pilots
can fly around storm systems.
- It's hard to really overstate
how safe air travel is.
- Back in the 1980s, your
chance of being on an airplane,
which had an accident that
killed even one person on board,
would've been about one in
one and a half a million.
Now, we're in a different
league altogether.
Safety has gotten better
by a multiple of about six.
(plane engine roars)
- [Narrator] The odds of
dying in an aircraft accident
on any airline are
one in 11 million.
The odds of getting hit by
lightning are one in 500,000.
- [Man] Huh, the numbers lie.
- [Narrator] It would take
one person 10,000 years
of daily flights before a
fatal crash would occur.
- So a flight every
day for 10,000 years,
how crazy is that?
- You have a bigger chance
than getting hit by lightning
than dying in a plane
crash, like, that's amazing.
- It shows you how
safe planes are.
- Well, now I don't wanna
go outside anymore, thanks.
(laughs) I'm just gonna stay
in a plane all the time.
- It's the technology
which has made
the biggest single difference.
Airplanes now, they're not just
technologically
beautifully engineered,
but they're smart.
There are computers
galore on board,
monitoring the equipment,
much better than people can.
- [Narrator] After deregulation
of the industry in 1978,
ticket prices fall and
air travel explodes.
New carriers spring up
through the 80s and 90s
to cater to the demand.
- They could charge
less, price competition.
You could start
thinking about things
like low-cost carriers,
things like People Express,
Southwest airlines.
- [Narrator] As budget
airlines trade comfort
for affordability,
air travel finally
becomes democratic.
From 1980 to 1989,
the number of
passengers worldwide
increases by 368 million.
- Flying is absolutely virgin
for everybody since then.
However, the actual experience
has gone somewhat downhill.
- The fact you only get
30 inches of leg room
obviously is disheartening.
- [Narrator] If that's
just too tight a squeeze,
there's always first class,
provided you can afford it.
- One of the most expensive
airline tickets right now
is Lufthansa from New York to
Hong Kong and it's $43,000,
which is also the starting
salary of many teachers
in the United States of America.
(indistinct) is
responsibility. ♪
- [Narrator] But back
in the 80s and 90s,
there was something
even more glamorous
than flying first-class.
(indistinct chattering)
It was riding on
board a rare bird
that harnessed the
power of seven,
to become the most exclusive
super jet in the skies.
- Some people would
say the Concorde
is the most beautiful
and impressive aircraft
that ever flew.
And I think those
people would be right.
(crowd cheering)
So the British and
the French, you know,
faced with this juggernaut
that Boeing was becoming,
thought, "How can we steal
a march in the Americans?
While the Americans
are building bigger,
we're gonna build faster."
- You have an airplane here,
which didn't just beat
the speed of sound;
it more than doubled it.
- [Narrator] Cruising
the skies at Mack 2,
twice the speed of sound,
the ultimate aircraft,
many believe in
commercial jet travel.
- [Narrator] At a
cost of $1.8 billion,
the Concorde program
was behind schedule
and grossly over-budget.
But when the super jet finally
enters commercial service
in 1976, the result was
utterly spectacular.
- When you push those
throttles forward,
the acceleration in
the small of your back
is like nothing else
that you can get
on any other civil airline.
- Oh, here we go.
You can really feel much
of the power in your back.
Concorde take off
at twice the speed
of a normal aircraft,
250 miles per hour.
It is amazing, my
ears are popping.
(plane engine whirring)
- [Narrator] Concorde
breaks the sound barrier
at 770 miles an hour.
Its cruising speed is
1,350 miles per hour,
Mach 2, or 23 miles per minute.
And it made its fastest
trans-Atlantic crossing
in two hours, 52 minutes
and 59 seconds in 1996.
- You're flying much higher
than normal commercial aviation.
You could see the
curvature of the Earth
and the sky was dark overhead,
almost like you were
traveling in space.
- [Narrator] Cruising
at 60,000 feet,
Concorde cuts air travel
time by more than half.
- Everybody in there was
somebody famous or rich.
- [Narrator] In the late 1990s,
a return ticket to fly
in this rarefied air
sets you back $12,000
or $18,000 today.
Only the creme de
la creme of pilots
are permitted to fly this bird.
- It had to be flown different.
It had a thousand
little dials everywhere.
It took an incredibly competent
and well-trained crew to fly.
- [Narrator] Piloting the super
jet was a sought-after gig,
but the failure rate among
captain candidates was 50%.
- Flying Concorde was
not an easy thing to do.
You've got a whole load of
passengers down the back
who don't want any shocks,
and they don't want you to
spill their gin and tonic.
- [Narrator] For 27
years, the supersonic jet
was the coolest, fastest,
and most exclusive commercial
aircraft in the skies.
- But those things have cost.
Notably, it made a sonic boom,
so it created this giant
earth-shattering rumble
as it passed overhead.
And it also burned
tremendous amounts of fuel.
- Concorde was not good
for the environment.
Maybe in the future,
we'll see a return
to this kind of
hyper-quick travel,
if there's a way to do it,
where it's fuel-efficient.
- [Narrator] After Concorde
is retired in 2003,
supersonic air travel
becomes a thing of the past.
Or maybe not.
(indistinct chattering)
In 2021, United Airlines
announces the purchase
of 15 supersonic passenger
planes from a Colorado startup.
Boom Supersonic
is more than happy
to show off their
fancy new jet online.
- I would love to see
travel expediated,
so those 23-hour flights
are now five or six hours.
Those six-hour flights are
now are 30, 40 minutes.
- Talking about a supersonic
business jet technologically,
it would be possible.
A supersonic airliner
as big as Concorde
or bigger than Concorde, all
the technological challenges,
they're still there
to be overcome.
- You can't get around with it.
If you're gonna go faster
than the speed of sound,
you're gonna make a boom.
- So you can't fly it
over populated areas.
- [Narrator] A
jackhammer creates
about 100 decibels of noise.
Human ear drums rupture
at 150 decibels.
(man screams)
A sonic boom exceeds
200 decibels.
It's enough power
to kill a person.
(man groans)
(mid-tempo music)
- If you wanna go really fast,
you have to burn a lot of fuel.
And if you're
building your aircraft
around burning tremendous
amounts of fossil fuel,
that's a problem.
- I'm not investing my money
in a supersonic
project at the moment.
I am not.
(mid-tempo music)
- [Narrator] The
business of aviation
is not for the risk-averse.
You need more than lucky
numbers to stay in this game.
- It's a volatile business.
It takes nerves of
steel to run an airline.
- [Narrator] Preparing
for the unpredictable
comes with the territory.
Yet no airline could
have quite foreseen
a sleeping giant beneath
a glacier in Iceland.
After a 177-year long nap
and some 300
earthquakes, he wakes up.
- [Man] From 10 miles
away, it's awe-inspiring.
From two miles,
it's intimidating.
From just a few hundred
yards, it's frightening.
- [Narrator] Soon, his
tongue-twister name
is on everybody's lips.
Well, sort of.
- Eyjafjallajokull.
- Eyjafjallajokull.
- Eyjafjallajokulla.
- What?
- Eyjafjallajokull.
- [Reporter] The latest
images of the volcano
in Eyjafjallajokull.
- An easy name to say.
Eyjafjallajokull.
- It was kind of
an obscure volcano.
It wasn't particularly
huge or anything,
but the peculiarities of the
geology or what have you,
this thing sent
tiny shards of glass
high up into the stratosphere.
- [Narrator] On
April 14th, 2010,
Eyjafjallajokull, nailed it,
unleashes a plume
of volcanic ash
that rises 6.2
miles into the sky.
We're talking 12 of the
tallest buildings in the world,
stacked atop one another.
- At that time, the jet stream
was blowing right over Iceland,
and it was carrying all
of these tiny shards
of floating glass over Europe,
over the entirety of
Western Europe and beyond.
- [Narrator] The debris
drifts and spreads
across 2.7 million square miles,
some 10 times the size of Texas.
- Old pilots know that volcanic
ash in the air is dangerous,
particularly for jet engines.
It's very abrasive.
- It is like
sandblasting your engine,
and turbines, they are
incredibly reliable.
They are marvels, but they
cannot be screwed with.
If you throw volcanic
dust into it,
you will destroy a
multi-million dollar engine
in a heartbeat.
- [Narrator] For seven
days, planes across Europe
sit idle on the tarmac.
10 million grounded passengers
shake their fists
at mother nature.
- The 2010 Iceland
volcano explosion
cost airlines $1.7 billion.
(cash register tinkling)
- [Narrator] Among
those grounded
was a familiar face
to United Airlines.
- It's not about
the places I go.
It's about the people I meet.
- [Narrator] American Tom Stuker
is the world's
most frequent flyer
with 21 million miles flown.
That's like going around
the equator 844 times.
Tom pays for all his trips,
including the 350 he's
made to Australia,
and then donates his
frequent flyer points.
- Air travel covers
such long distances
it's fairly sensitive
to changes in weather,
or even local events
like disease outbreaks
or political coups.
- [Narrator] Early in 2020,
Tom and the entire industry
are blindsided again,
this time, an invisible
airborne villain
100 nanometers in
diameters, to blame.
(electronic swooshing)
(ominous music)
- COVID 19, this pandemic
has really hit aviation hard.
(ominous music)
I think there are
no other industries
that have been hit harder.
- People weren't
allowed to travel.
So all the industries
and all the jobs
associated with the airline
industry are being affected.
- At its worst stage,
about 90% of aviation
stopped, of civil aviation.
- [Narrator] As
COVID 19 spreads,
passenger journeys drop
from 4.5 billion in 2019
to 1.8 billion in 2020.
That's a $370 billion
loss for the airlines,
and another $115 billion
hit to the airports.
(taut music)
- Things have
happen all the time
that can cause tremendous loss
and there's nothing
they can do about it.
But ultimately, air travel
will continue as it has,
which is to grow
and grow and grow.
- I don't have any doubt
that people will recover
their wanderlust and their
wish to travel by air
once the pandemic is under
control or even behind us.
- [Narrator] No stranger
to the ups and downs
of the business, Boeing
predicts a full recovery
within two and a half years.
- Domestic aviation in the USA
is rebounding
surprisingly quickly.
(bright music)
- [Narrator] On June 27th, 2021,
2,167,380 passengers
passed through US airports.
It's the busiest
day since air travel
came to a screeching
halt in March of 2020.
- Air travel connects countries.
It connects citizens.
- [Narrator] What
starts as daredevils
in their flying machines
morphs into an exclusive
form of transportation,
and then evolves into
the most sophisticated
and safe way for everyone
to travel the world.
- [Steward] On behalf
of the flight crew,
thank you for flying with
us and have a pleasant day.
- Air travel equals freedom.
- Air travel makes
the world smaller.
- Air travel is a
boring experience
that allows you to
do something awesome.
- Air travel equals dirtier
air and more pollutants,
but it also equals
beach vacation.
- It doesn't take a lot
to get me on a plane.
It usually takes two
Valiums and a glass of wine.
- Air travel.
(plane engine roaring)
(upbeat music)