Delta Air Lines and the Boeing 747-100

On 9 September 2015, the very first Boeing 747-400 built, N661US, touched down at Atlanta from Honolulu as Delta Flight 836 for the last time in revenue passenger service. Ship 6301 was the Boeing 747-400 prototype which was then delivered to launch customer Northwest Airlines on 8 December 1989 and came over to Delta with the 2008 merger. There are twelve remaining 747-400s flying with Delta, all of which came over from Northwest. Current fleet planning will have these 747s retired in 2017. Delta did however, for a brief time, operate the first variant of the 747 family, the 747-100, from September 1970 to April 1977. Only five aircraft were taken on strength with Delta and while the 747-100 was but a short historical footnote in Delta’s history, its legacy looms large to this day with the airline.

My own profile art of Delta’s first 747-100, N9896 “Ship 101” as it looked on her delivery in 1970.

(JP Santiago)

In order to understand what the 747 was for Delta at the time, one has to consider that as the 1960s were drawing to a close, Delta was in the midst of transition on several fronts. The first change change came with the Southern Transcontinental Route Case of 1961. Prior to deregulation, airlines often had to make a case for the opening of new services and routes to the Civil Aeronautics Board. Often these cases consisted of years of deliberation and often politics played a central role in airlines winning favorable rulings from the CAB. In the 1950s, the CAB favored interchange services as a means for airlines to open up new markets without saturating a given route with an excess of seats, harming profitability. Having a predominantly Southeastern US-anchored network, Delta linked up with several other airlines to offer interchange services which allowed it to fly as far west as California. As traffic grew on the interchange services to the West Coast, Delta petitioned the CAB to operate the West Coast services on its own and in one of the more historic decisions made by the CAB, both Delta and National were given route authorities to California from the southeast in what was called the Southern Transcontinental Route Case. Starting in 1961, the previous interchange agreements were declared redundant and Delta opened up a range of nonstop services to San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco from Atlanta, Dallas, and New Orleans. Within a year, Las Vegas was added as well as Miami which for the first time made Delta a transcontinental airline. By 1963, the CAB permitted Delta to carry West Coast traffic to its Caribbean destinations via New Orleans and onward to Florida (Orlando and Miami) via Atlanta. In an unrelated decision by the CAB, Delta was allowed to interchange on routes to London from Washington Dulles with Pan American and soon Delta’s DC-8s were flying to Europe as part of that interchange agreement.

The second and biggest of these changes came with the death of Delta’s founder, C.E. Woolman, on 11 September 1968. In his 1841 essay “Self-Reliance”, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote that “An institution is the lengthened shadow of one man...all history resolves itself very easily into the biography of a few stout and earnest persons." From Delta’s founding in 1927 to his death in 1968, no other individual was so closely identified with Delta than C.E. Woolman. He became the airline’s president and general manager in 1945 and became its chairman of the board only a year before his death. Though viewed as a stern autocrat by the press, Woolman was beloved by Delta employees. On his 25th anniversary with Delta, the employees presented him with a new Cadillac and though he had own several other cars, he kept that Cadillac until he died. Though ably succeeded C.H. “Charlie” Dolson, W.T. “Tom” Bebe and David Garrett, there was no question it was still Woolman’s airline for years to come.

The last change that frames the selection and operation of the Boeing 747-100 by Delta was its 1972 merger with Northeast Airlines. Throughout its history, adversity plagued Northeast which always seemed be hobbled by the CAB with a small network and when Northeast finally did break out of New England in 1968 with new routes to Florida, it ran square into the crosshairs of Eastern which was the incumbent giant of the US East Coast at the time. With Northeast literally going from cash crisis to cash crisis, its New England route authorities soon proved to be ripe for acquisition via merger. The first suitor was Northwest Airlines in 1969. Interestingly, the CAB approved the merger in 1970 but it would be without some of Northeast’s more attractive route authorities like Miami-Los Angeles. Northwest withdrew its merger offer in 1971 as a result. Eastern and TWA then offered merger terms, with Eastern in particular seeing a merger as a way of knocking a competitor out of the New England-Florida market. Those negotiations also fell through and ultimately it was Delta that came through with a suitable merger offer that also met with the approval of the CAB. On 19 May 1972, President Richard Nixon signed off on the Delta-Northeast merger (since foreign routes were involved).

So these are three events in which to put the context of the Delta’s order of the Boeing 747-100- the Southern Transcontinental Route Case of 1961, C.E. Woolman’s death in 1968, and the merger with Northeast Airlines in 1972.

Prior to the launch of the Boeing 747, the “big jet” of the day were the Douglas Super Sixty series DC-8s which had surpassed the Boeing 707 in utility and passenger capacity. While the 747’s launch has been historically associated with Juan Trippe and Pan Am, at the time, Boeing was keen on getting one up on Douglas and the 747 was the aircraft that would capture the “jumbo” jet title from the DC-8 Super 61/63. Delta representatives had visited Boeing to view the progress on the 747 program and were suitably impressed with the aircraft. Despite their favorable views on the 747 though, it was clear to all of Delta’s management from the outset that the 747 was too much airplane for the airline which had a predominantly short- and medium-haul route network with its longer routes suitably (not to mention cost-effectively) served by the DC-8 fleet. On the other hand, two of Delta’s biggest competitors, Northwest and American, had already placed orders for the 747. Delta’s fellow “southern transcontinental route” airline, National, was also expected to place orders for the 747 as well. The writing was on the wall- Delta’s DC-8s were no match for the expected spacious comfort of the big Boeing and the prudent move was to get the 747 as well, even if was just a small number on a temporary basis. In April 1967, Charlie Dolson, the airline president of the time, announced Delta’s order for three 747-100s for $20 million each with options for two more aircraft. It marked the very first time that Delta had ordered from Boeing. Preparations were made at six Delta destinations and three alternate cities for operation of the massive jet. When Pan American launched the world’s first 747 passenger services in January 1970, Delta had two representatives aboard the inaugural passenger flight.

Delta marketed the upper deck lounge of its 747s as the “Private Penthouse”.

(JP Santiago)

While Delta was making preparations for the arrival of the 747, it was carefully considering its future widebody needs which were better met by a smaller aircraft in the form of either the Douglas DC-10 or the Lockheed L-1011. Delta’s technical staff liked both aircraft and it was believed the DC-10 was favored given Delta’s long association with Douglas Aircraft and its extensive use of both the DC-8 and DC-9 in the 1960s. Delta’s close association with Douglas as one of its most loyal customers was the product of a friendship between C.E. Woolman and Donald Douglas. In the 1960s, Douglas encountered repeated financial and technical difficulties with both the DC-8 and DC-9 programs that resulted in financial losses that led to its merger with McDonnell Aircraft in 1967 which effectively put Donald Douglas out of the executive suite. And keep in mind it was the following year that C.E. Woolman passed away. In a sense, Delta was now a “free agent” no longer tied to Douglas. Lockheed, eager to put its reputation back on good standing after the issues with the Lockheed L-188 Electra, pulled out all the stops in the Tristar program, engaging potential airline customers aggressively and early on in the Tristar development, resulting in an aircraft that at least in Delta’s eyes, was practically custom-built for them. Delta did, however, order five DC-10 Series 10s as insurance against the Tristar program when Rolls Royce ran into serious financial trouble during the development of the RB.211 engine used on the Tristar.

Delta’s 747-100 order was fulfilled quickly with N9896 being handed over to Delta on 25 September 1970 with the aircraft arriving in Atlanta to great fanfare on 2 October 1970. N9897 was delivered on 25 October 1970 and N9898 was delivered on 18 November 1970. While Pan American was first to launch 747 services on 22 January 1970 on its New York JFK-London Heathrow route, mostly domestic 747 services were launched in quick succession that year:

25 February: Trans World Airlines, New York JFK-Los Angeles (first domestic 747 service)

2 March: American Airlines, New York JFK-Los Angeles

26 June: Continental Airlines, Chicago-Los Angeles-Honolulu

1 July: Northwest Airlines, Chicago-Seattle-Tokyo

23 July: United Airlines, New York JFK-San Francisco

25 October: National Airlines, Miami-New York, Miami-Los Angeles

25 October: Delta Airlines, Atlanta-Dallas-Los Angeles

21 December: Eastern Airlines, New York JFK-Miami

15 January 1971: Braniff International, Dallas Love Field-Honolulu

By the end of 1970, Delta put the other two 747-100s into service with flights to Chicago, Detroit, and Miami. The options for the two aircraft were exercised the following year with N9899 being delivered to Delta on 30 September 1971 and N9900 arriving on 11 November 1971. While Delta’s 747-100s flew amongst Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit and Miami, they were also put to use on the Pan Am interchange services between Washington Dulles and London Heathrow. In the space of just over ten years, Delta went from a mostly regional airline anchored in the southeastern United States with some Caribbean routes to a transcontinental airline operating the Boeing 747 with limited interchange services to London. Never before in Delta’s prior history had it grown so much. But its fleet was quite diverse as a result of the merger of Northeast Airlines- it had twelve different aircraft with eight different engine types in service- in August 1972, Delta had three variants of the Douglas DC-8 in service, three variants of the Douglas DC-9, two variants of the Boeing 727, the Boeing 747-100, the Convair CV-880, the Fairchild-Hiller FH-227, the Lockheed L-100 Hercules for its cargo division, and it was anticipating the arrival of both the Lockheed L-1011 Tristar and the Douglas DC-10! In the interests of reducing the maintenance costs, standardizing operations, and holding down spare parts inventories, the fleet types had to be pared down. By this point, David Garrett had become president of the airline and it was his legacy that Delta streamlined its fleet which gave it record breaking profits in the late 1970s. Garrett’s primary imperative was fuel savings- the 1973 OPEC oil embargo that followed the Yom Kippur War in the Middle East caused a sharp spike in the cost of fuel.

The Pratt & Whitney JT9D was the first production high bypass turbofan used on a production airliner.

(JP Santiago)

For smaller markets and the short- to medium-haul flying, Delta standardized on the Douglas DC-9 Series 32. For medium-sized markets and medium-haul flying, Delta standardized on the Boeing 727-200. It had acquired them via its merger with Northeast Airlines and found them to have superior economics to the Convair CV-880s and to some degree even the DC-8s. In addition, the 727-200 used similar Pratt & Whitney JT8D engines as the DC-9. There were thirteen 727-200s that came over with the merger with Northeast and Delta wanted more- in March 1972, Delta returned to Boeing once again, this time with an order for fourteen 727-200s (the order was placed before final approval of the Northeast merger by President Nixon)- Boeing even took Delta’s remaining Convairs as a trade-ins on the 727 order. By 1977, there would be 88 727-200s in Delta’s fleet. Delta’s first experience in working with Boeing on the 747-100 order was so favorable the airline was eager to work with Boeing quite readily again. The arrival of more 727-200s allowed Delta to dispose of the Convairs and the oldest DC-8s first. While most of the Series 51s and Super 61s were sold off, a sizeable number were kept on for several more years with some of the Super 61s getting the Cammacorp re-engining with the CFM56 to become Super 71s.

By this point it was clear the Lockheed L-1011 Tristar would be the long-haul workhorse of the Delta fleet. The DC-10s were eventually sold off to United. The first Tristar arrived in Atlanta on 12 October 1973 with the first passenger services on 15 December 1973 on the Atlanta-Philadelphia route. By 1974 there were ten Tristars in service but their spacious underfloor cargo holds meant they carried 25% of Delta’s cargo despite being less than 10% of the fleet. That allowed the L-100 Hercules transports to be sold off that year. When the Boeing 747-100 was ordered in 1967, it was with the understanding it was too big of an airplane for Delta but it was needed to compete in the marketplace. With the Tristar quickly proving itself, the 747-100’s days were quickly numbered and arrangements were made for the first two 747-100s to be sold off but the last three stayed on just a bit longer until more Tristars were in service. Delta’s last Boeing 747-100 service was flown 23 April 1977 Las Vegas-Atlanta.

Of the five original Delta 747-100s, only the first one, N9896 “Ship 101” can still be seen today at the Evergreen Aviation Museum.

(JP Santiago)

The fates of Delta’s five 747-100s:

N9896: Returned to Boeing 1974, leased to China Airlines 1976-1978, operated by Pan Am 1978-1991, then flew with Evergreen International. Preserved at the Evergreen Aviation Museum in 2010 (it’s on the roof as part of the waterpark with waterslides coming out of it!)

N9897: Returned to Boeing 1977, operated by Flying Tiger 1977-1989 (leased to El Al Israel for a year), operated by FedEx 1989-1991, operated by Air Hong Kong 1991-1996, then Polar Air Cargo, now scrapped.

N9898: Returned to Boeing 1975, operated by China Airlines 1975-1976, leased out by Guiness Peat Aviation 1976-1984, operated by Pan Am 1984-1991, operated by Evergreen International starting in 1991 and converted to a water bomber “Evergreen Supertanker”, retired with Evergreen’s bankruptcy in 2013. In storage at Pinal Air Park.

N9899: Returned to Boeing 1977, operated by Flying Tiger 1977-1989 (leased to El Al Israel for a year), operated by FedEx 1989-1991, operated by Air Hong Kong 1991-1995, then Polar Air Cargo, now scrapped.

N9900: Returned to Boeing 1977, operated by Flying Tiger 1977-1989, operated by FedEx 1989-1993, operated by Air Hong Kong 1993-1994, operated by Kalitta 1994-2008. Stored at Oscoda, then scrapped 2015.

As an interesting historical footnote, the first officer on the delivery of Delta’s first Lockheed Tristar was Captain Jack McMahan who at the time was one of only two men in the United States certificated to fly the DC-10, L-1011 and 747. The other pilot was an FAA examiner. He was asked by a reporter on his impressions of all three widebodies- he praised the handling of the DC-10, the overall design of the 747, and the advanced systems of the L-1011. He remarked “Flying the three planes is like going out with three sisters. They have the same background but different personalities!”

This article was originally posted on AirlineReporter.com on 23 October 2015.

Sources: Delta: The History of an Airline by W. David Lewis and Wesley Phillips Newton. University of Georgia Press, 1979, pp 340-392. Delta: An Airline and Its Aircraft by R.E.G. Davies. Palawdr Press, 1990, pp 76,80-86,96-97. 

C.E. Woolman and the Founding of Delta Air Lines

C.E. Woolman (Minnesota Public Radio)

Collett Everman Woolman was born in Indiana in 1889 and was raised in the academic environment of Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, where his father taught physics at the University of Illinois. Woolman's interest in aviation began at an early age when he and his friends appropriated every clothesline in his neighborhood to build a giant passenger-carrying kite which fortunately for history, crashed before anyone tried to take flight in it. As a freshman, he even built a crude airplane which had to make a forced landing on his university campus. In his sophomore year of collge at the University of Illinois, he learned of the first aviation world meet to be held in Reims, France, and the ambitious Woolman managed to get a job tending a herd of 800 travelling calves to get to France. On his return, he helped pioneer aviator Claude Grahame-White overhaul a rotary engine in the passenger steamer's cargo hold in preparation for an airshow in Boston. 

He graduated in 1912 from the University of Illinois with a bachelor's degree in agriculture. That's right, farming. The legendary founder and head of Delta Airlines studied agriculture in college, hardly the field to propel him into aviation, but in those days, aviation as a business and industry hardly existed and was more the realm of half-cocked mad scientist types to be shunned by the general population. In fact, if you wanted to look up Glenn Martin's aircraft company in Los Angeles in those days in the phone book, it was listed under "Amusements"! With a fresh degree in agriculture, Woolman moved south to farm various locales in Mississippi before becoming the manager of a 7000 acre plantation in northern Louisiana. 

In 1913 he joined the extension department of Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge as an agricultural sciences instructor who travelled out to farmers to pass on the latest techniques. In 1914 the US Congress passed the Smith-Lever Act which formalized the extension cooperative system in which universities would reach out to farmers to formally educate them on the latest developments in agriculture. With this new law, the young C.E. Woolman became LSU's first extension agent in Lousiana and based his operation in Monroe, Louisiana. 

Travelling throughout Louisiana, he not only met with farmers and plantation owners but also consulted with financial institutions on investing in agriculture as well as liasing with the agricultural scientists back at the LSU campus. It was during this time that the boll weevil infestation was ravaging the US cotton crop. A chemical had been developed which was effective against the boll weevil; calcium arsenate was a dry powder which worked well, but was cumbersome and inefficient when applied from the ground. 

The federal government had experimented with US Army planes in rudimentary crop dusting efforts, but a grant was given to an entomologist by the name of Dr. Bert Coad at the US Department of Agriculture's Delta Laboratory in Tallulah, Louisiana. Coad had difficulty finding an airplane that possessed a good load carrying capacity to carry enough calcium arsenate powder to dust an entire cotton field. Coad hooked up with a small company called Huff-Daland which was trying to market a military training biplane. Struggling for cash, Huff-Daland eagerly cooperated with Bert Coad in his crop dusting trials.

Huff-Daland Duster at the National Air & Space Museum
(Smithsonian Air & Space Museum)

Given Woolman's job with LSU's agricultural extension, he observed many of Coad's trials with interest. Encouraged by Woolman's favorable assessments of the effectiveness of aerial crop dusting against the boll weevil, Coad tried to get more federal grant money to expand the enterprise. Woolman had enthusiastically spread the word to area farmers that there was a new weapon against the boll weevil and soon Coad found he didn't have the resources to meet the demand. But the US Department of Agriculture saw Coad's trials as only an experiment and failed to provide more resources. 

In 1923, the vice president of Huff-Daland happend to stop by Tallulah, Louisiana, on his way to Texas to demonstrate a Huff-Daland trainer to the US Army. There he ran into Coad and Woolman at the airport and found their work intriguing and thought it would make for a great commercial opportunity with the right amount of investment. He convinced Huff-Daland to set up a crop dusting division in northern Louisiana and he put Coad in charge. But Coad wasn't the best of salesmen and he asked Huff-Daland to hire C.E. Woolman as it's head of sales. Huff-Daland Dusters was originally based in Macon, Georgia, with the bulk of their original business being the spraying of peach orchards. However, by 1925 the company moved to Monroe, Louisiana, with the promise of local investment that Woodman had secured. Coad's former laboratory in Tallulah was close by and Woolman's work with the farmers there brought them a ready-made clientele. Woolman, in that classic Southern genteel style he would become famous for, convinced local business leaders in Monroe to invest in Huff-Daland Dusting Company and by the mid 1920s, Woolman had expanded the dusting operation to include Texas, Arakansas, California, North Carolina and even a contract to do crop dusting for the Peruvian government. In a few short years, Huff Daland Dusters would have one of the largest private fleets of aircraft in the United States, even more than some of the airlines of the day.

Delta's first logo (Delta Flight Museum)

Within a few years, Woolman himself would buy the entire dusting operation from Huff-Daland while Huff-Daland Aircraft itself moved to Pennsylvania and was renamed Keystone Aircraft, one of the pioneering aircraft companies of the day. Woodman wanted a simple name preferably with five letters and it was his long time administrative assistant Catherine Fitzgerald, who suggested the name "Delta". Given its long time service area of the Mississippi Delta region, the name was perfect and the triangle was not too dissimilar to the Huff-Daland Dusting Company logo. One of Delta's first non-dusting contract came from the Army Corps of Engineers who wanted aerial surveys done of the levees along the Mississippi River after some disastrous floods in 1927. Woodman likely was considering starting an airline around that time, a federal airmail survey passed through Monroe and he had been looking at a proposed air mail route that connected Shreveport, Monroe, Jackson, Meridian, Tuscaloosa, and Birmingham. In 1929, he even went as far as got advice from a Minneapolis-based airline (Northwest) who offered him suggestions on operating a passenger-carrying airline. However, Delta's finances at the time weren't in a position to get the Ford or Fokker trimotor airliners used by the major airlines of the day. As luck would have it, in a small town not far from Monroe was a businessman named John Fox who had just started a local air service that concentrated on taking people up for joyrides in Travel Air biplanes. Fox had ordered a larger aircraft, a high-wing monoplane with a six-seat enclosed cabin Travel Air S6000. Fox and Woodman met in 1929 and hit it off well given their mutual aspirations of starting an airline. Delta purchased the assets of Fox Flying Service in exchange for Delta stock which made John Fox the biggest Delta shareholder. Fox was named an officer of the company by Woodman and moved to Monroe to help Woodman get their airline off the ground.  Delta Air Service carried its first passenger from Dallas, Texas, to Monroe, Louisiana in on 17 June 1929. Though Delta's agricultural operations would dominate for a while longer, it was a humble beginning for a Southern farmer and his airline.........

Historical Tangent: Thomas Huff and Elliot Daland started their company in 1920 as Ogdensburg Aeroway Company in 1920 in Ogdensburg, New York. They soon became the Huff Daland Aero Company and in 1924 their chief designer was James S. McDonnell (yes, *that* McDonnell that would go on to establish McDonnell Aircraft in St. Louis during the Second  World War). Thomas Huff sold his share of the company in 1926 and it was acquired by a securities firm who invested a significant amount in Huff Daland and moved the operation from New York to Bristol, Pennsylvania and renamed it Keystone Aircraft. Keystone merged with Loening Aircraft in 1928 and the following year Keystone-Loening was taken over by Curtiss Wright. The Loening plant on the East River in New York City was closed by Curtiss and operations transferred to Bristol. A handful of Loening workers and management, though, all New Yorkers, elected to stay and form their own company to stay in New York. The leader of the group was none other than Leroy Grumman. Yes, *that* Grumman!

Sources: Delta: The History of an Airline by W. David Lewis and Wesley Phillips Newton. University of Georgia Press, 1979, pp 1-24. Delta: An Airline and Its Aircraft by R.E.G. Davies. Palawdr Press, 1990, pp 8-13. 

The Genesis of the Airbus A320

As far back as the late 1960s while the Airbus Industrie was still a start up finalizing the design of the A300 was there a realization among the major airframe manufacturers of Europe that there would be a need for a single-aisle aircraft to replace the aging fleets of BAC One-Elevens, Tridents, and Caravelles. A multitude of designs emerged from the various companies as there was a common desire for a "European" competitor to the highly successful Douglas DC-9 and Boeing 737 airliners. By the new decade, only France and the UK had the industrial capacity and expertise in putting a such an aircraft into service, but the UK was reeling from not just the withdrawal from the Airbus consortium, but the eventual cancellation of the BAC Three-Eleven project that caused the UK to withdraw from Airbus in the first place. France was putting its weight behind the Dassault Mercure, but the devaluation of the US dollar, the increase in the price of oil following the 1973 Yom Kippur War and Arab oil embargo and the short range of the Mercure (at full payload it was barely a 1000 miles) meant that the Mercure wasn't the aircraft the airline industry wanted at the time. BAC found itself reliant on new versions of the BAC One-Eleven, the 475 and 500 variants, but even these designs were failing miserably against Boeing and McDonnell Douglas on the world market. 

At the 1971 Paris Air Show BAC announced the QSTOL (Quiet Short Take Off/Landing) airliner which looked like a scaled up, wide-body version of the later BAe-146 airliner. But BAC lacked the financial capital to commit the QSTOL to production and the UK government, smarting after the cancellation of the BAC Three-Eleven and the bankruptcy of Rolls-Royce, was hesitant to fund the launch of the QSTOL and project died quietly that year. In February of the following year BAC formed a consortium with MBB of West Germany and Saab-Scania of Sweden to develop the Europlane with the realization that a joint venture was the only way to secure the financing to launch production of any new jetliner. CASA of Spain joined later than year and at the 1972 Farnborough Air Show, the Europlane was announced only to be redesigned for the 1973 Paris Air Show as a CF6/RB.211 rear twinjet with a T-tail that borrowed heavily from the BAC Three-Eleven design. But politics intervened- with MBB heavily committed to the A300 program, Aerospatiale saw the Europlane as distracting MBB from full commitment to Airbus Industrie. Eventually, the Europlane, too, died quietly. 

But while the Europlane venture was active, Hawker Siddeley formed a rival team called CAST (Civil Aircraft Study Team) with VFW-Fokker and Dornier to look into a family of aircraft to compete with Europlane. CAST got off the ground in 1972 and though design studies never got as far as Europlane did, one design did emerge that was a single-aisle twin with underwing engines. At the 1974 Farnborough Air Show, the Group of Six was announced- a new consortium to replace both Europlane and CAST with both BAC and Hawker Siddeley, Aerospatiale, both Dornier and MBB, and VFW-Fokker. The Group of Six combined the work of Europlane and CAST into a new project that featured two designs- a 200 seater designated Type A and a 110+ seater designated Type B. The Type A design became the Airbus A310. With the entry of Dassault into the consortium it became the Group of Seven. The British offered new variants of the both Trident and One-Eleven and the French offered two designs, the Aerospatiale A200 and the similar looking Dassault Mercure 200 with CFM56 engines. 

This attempt at the Type B from the Group of Seven ended when the French insisted upon a lead role and Dassault broke away to pursue a joint venture with McDonnell Douglas based on the Mercure 200 design. That effort also failed due to issues of design leadership between the two companies and with the nationalization of the BAC in 1977 to form British Aerospace, the new BAe, needing a new cornerstone in the commercial market, abandoned further development of versions of the One-Eleven and joined forces with Airbus that year to develop an all-new 150-seat single-aisle aircraft under the program name of JET (Joint European Transport). BAe was offered a lead role in JET with final assembly in the UK provided the British returned to Airbus Industrie. JET was made up of British Aerospace (BAe), with Airbus being represented by MBB, VFW-Fokker, and Aerospatiale. Hawker Siddeley, now part of BAe, led the design effort for JET and created JET1, a 136-seater, and JET2, a 163-seater. Both aircraft were influenced by Aerospatiale's own previous A200 design. Both designs were powered by the GE/SNECMA CFM56 engine and early on a decision was made for a fuselage diameter larger than that of the Boeing 727/737 to allow a more comfortable six-abreast seating arrangement than that of the Boeing jets. After discussion with potential airline customers, JET1 was dropped and efforts were focused on JET2. 

In 1978 JET2 was formalized with BAe being responsible for lead design and final assembly in the UK and Airbus Industrie responsible for coordinating BAe's European partners. In the following year the UK returned to the Airbus consortium and curiously, the JET2 team was relocated to Toulouse, France and in 1980 JET2 was redesignated under the SA (Single Aisle) designator with SA1, SA2, and SA3 being various lengths of the JET2 design.

At the same time that JET2 was moved to Toulouse, Delta Air Lines issued its "Delta III" requirement for a 150-seater with 50% of the fuel burn of the Boeing 727 that formed the bulk of Delta's US domestic fleet. Keen to enlarge its market share in the United States, Airbus consulted with Delta on the the Delta III specifications and focused much of the SA work around Delta's requirements. This aircraft was finalized in 1984 and launched by Airbus Industrie as the A320. The UK government and the British aircraft industry unions pushed hard to have A320 final assembly moved back to the UK, but the increased financial commitment Airbus required to establish final production of the A320 in the UK met with disapproval by the British Parliament and A320 assembly remained where it is to this day at Toulouse. 

Ironically Delta never ended up ordering the A320 despite its needs having shaped the A320's design significantly. Much in the same way American Airlines shaped the A300 design nearly 15 years earlier, it was only years later after the A320 program was well-established that Delta ended up operating the A320, but not as a customer but as the merger partner with Northwest Airlines in 2009 which itself had a substantial A320 fleet as well as the shorter A319. 

Source: Stuck on the Drawing Board: Unbuilt British Commercial Aircraft Since 1945 by Richard Payne. Tempus Publishing, 2004, p162-175.

How a Small Airline First Cracked Pan American's Monopoly

Prior to the Second World War, international airline services from the United States were dominated by Pan American World Airways and its politically influential chairman, Juan Trippe. With implicit backing from the US State Department, Trippe forged Pan American into a "Chosen Instrument" of overseas American commerce with his extensive air network of services covering the Pacific, Latin America, and across the Atlantic. However, the demands of the Second World War resulted in most of the US airlines expanding their operations into overseas flying for the military to support the war effort. As a result, many airlines that had traditionally not flown outside US borders gained valuable experience in overseas operations.

As a result, many of those airlines began to look at what the postwar commercial aviation market might look like and airlines like American (via its subsidiary American Overseas Airlines), Trans World Airlines, and even smaller airlines like Northeast began to prepare applications to the Civil Aeronautics Board for international route authorities.

In March 1944, Senator Patrick McCarran of Nevada proposed a bill in Congress that would create what he called the "All-American Flag Line", a single international airline that would be jointly-0wned and operated by existing US airlines with an operating certificate dating prior to the 1938 passage of the Civil Aeronautics Act. McCarran's airline would be prohibited from domestic services and US airlines would be prohibited from international services outside of their participation in the "All-American Flag Line". Senator McCarran wanted to a single prestigious American international airline that all the other US airlines funneled traffic into from domestic gateways.

The "All-American Flag Line" would be a federally-chartered private airline starting with $200 million of federal capital and each participating US airline could purchase up to $50 million in stock of the airline. As Pan American had developed most of the international routes before the Second World War, Juan Trippe would hold ownership of 25% of the proposed airline.

This arrangement, of course, did not sit well with the smaller US airlines. While the US majors like TWA, United, American, and Eastern saw the McCarran bill as a way to gain entry into the international arena without the capital expenditure of expanding overseas on their own (since this seed money would be provided by the federal government), smaller airlines balked at the price of investment and being consigned to having a small voice compared to that of Juan Trippe, much less that of the larger airlines as well.

One of the most eloquent and vocal critics of the McCarran bill was Carleton Putnam of Chicago & Southern Airlines. In June 1933 as a young law student, Carleton Putnam started Pacific Seaboard Airlines operating Bellanca Pacemakers between San Francisco and Los Angeles. When President Roosevelt canceled the air mail contracts in 1934 during the infamous Air Mail Scandal, Pacific Seaboard Airlines lost its primary revenue stream. After the US Army Air Corps tried in vain to carry air mail, the contracts were once again put up for bid and Putnam in desperation to save his small airline bid on an air mail route in the Mississippi Valley that connected Chicago to New Orleans. To the surprise of many, Putnam won the contract and in 1934 he moved his entire operation to Memphis, Tennessee and on 17 July 1935 he launched passenger services as Chicago & Southern Airlines.

During the Second World War, Chicago & Southern operated a vital contract flying troops and cargo throughout Alaska during the Aleutian campaign to oust the Japanese from the area. Putnam even applied for postwar international route authorities to fly to Singapore and Batavia (modern day Jakarta) from Chicago via Alaska in what may very well be the first proposal to use a Great Circle Route that is now a primary routing for air traffic between North America and Asia.

Trippe of course was supportive of the McCarran bill and he certainly didn't expect such tenacious opposition from someone like Chicago & Southern and Carleton Putnam. Putnam rallied the other smaller airlines, pointing out that it should be the free market and competition that should determine who was most suitable for international services rather than have the government virtually enshrine Pan American as the default international airline.

To go against someone as powerful in Congress as Senator McCarran who was highly influential in aviation affairs and to simultaneously take on Juan Trippe of Pan American, probably the most influential airline head of the day? That's quite a set of brass ones and Putnam managed to pull it off and have the McCarran bill killed off. While Chicago & Southern Airlines didn't get its Great Circle route to Asia, it was handsomely rewarded by the CAB with route authorities into Pan Am's traditional Caribbean stronghold with services to Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti and the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and all the way to Caracas, Venezuela from New Orleans.

Carleton Putnam won the admiration of many in the industry for his stand against McCarran and Trippe, most importantly with C.E. Woolman, founder and head of Delta Air Lines. Woolman saw in Putnam and Chicago & Southern a kindred spirit that shared his own business ethics and ideals. Having grown weary of trying to expand services to New York but failing thanks to the maneuverings of Eastern Air Lines and its acerbic president, Eddie Rickenbacker, Woolman embarked on expanding Delta westward through a merger with Chicago & Southern that was finalized in 1953.

And perhaps more importantly, the stage was set for overseas services by any US airline that could show to the CAB that it had the wherewithal to operate internationally, cracking Pan Am's long dominance of international services.

Source: Delta: The History of the Airline by W. David Lewis and Wesley Phillips Newton. University of Georgia Press, 1979, p200-201.