Two's Company and Three's A Crowd: The Boeing 737-200 Flight Crew Controversy

In the late 1950s and early 1960s propliners still served a lot of the shorter routes in the US domestic market as jets were becoming the fashionable on the longer routes where the time savings of the jets over propliners was most apparent. However, the travelling public was irreversibly enamored with jet aircraft for travel and soon shorter domestic routes would be singing with jet noise- the first designs for the medium-range domestic routes, the Convair 880 and the Boeing 720, were too large and uneconomical to operate on short-range routes. Boeing responded with the 727 which would prove to be one of its outstanding commercial successes, but airlines were looking for an even smaller jet. By the early 1960s the Douglas DC-9, BAC 1-11, and the Sud-Aviation Caravelle were established in the market and Boeing's smallest offering, the 727-100, was too big for most short-range routes. When long-time Boeing customer American Airlines turned to Great Britain for the BAC 1-11 for a short-range jet to complement its 727 services, the engineers at Renton got yet another kick in the pants to produce an offering to compete with the twin-jets. 

With the first generation of twin-jets disproving the skeptics that thought short-range routes would too uneconomical for jets, Boeing designers aimed for a small twin jet that was more flexible than the existing competition that could not only fly into smaller communities and smaller airports, but would blend seamlessly with larger jet operations at major airports. Key in making this possible was the decision by 737 lead engineer John Steiner to make the new 737 the same cross-section as the 707 and the 727. This would give the 737 the lead in comfort by offering 3-3 seating whereas the competition could only offer 3-2 seating. For the first time, big jet comfort was possible on shorter sectors. 

A United Boeing 737-200 in its delivery livery, the Mainliner scheme.

But the design decision had an unforeseen consequence that would result in considerable controversy between the pilots, the airlines, and the FAA who would be certifying the aircraft. At the time, the FAA had imposed a limit on the size of aircraft that could be operated by a two-man flight crew- it was set at 80,000 pounds maximum takeoff weight (MTOW). This limit dictated the size of the first DC-9s and as the BAC 1-11s were below the limit, Braniff and American who had ordered One-Elevens operated them with two-man crews. Aircraft over the 80,000 pound limit required three crew in the cockpit. Boeing's original 737 proposals weighed in at 79,000 pounds, but potential customers found the design too small. Eastern and United in particular wanted a larger aircraft. Even despite a rule change by the FAA raising the two-man crew limit to 90,000 pounds, the revised 737 design needed a three-man crew as it tipped the scales at 93,000 pounds. 

In April 1965 the FAA announced that it was abolishing the weight limit criteria and from then on, aircraft would be certified for two-crew operation on an individual basis. This followed two years of deliberation and consultations with the pilots' unions, airline managers, airframe manufacturers and human factors studies. 

Of the four major airlines in the US at the time ("The Big Four"), three had already made their choices in the short-range jet category. Eastern and TWA ordered the DC-9 and American ordered the BAC 1-11. That left United as the only major interested in the 737. Of the early orders for the 737, only United's order was sizable (40 -200s ordered in 1965). Lufthansa also had a significant order, but they weren't encumbered by the FAA-mandated weight restrictions on two-man crew operations. However, United's managers found the 737 to have a political disadvantage since the pilots' unions at the time felt that as the largest of the twin jets available, it should be operated with a crew of three. While expensive for the airlines in terms of labor costs, the 737 design from the outset was intended for a two-man crew. Only a small jumpseat was available on the flight deck.

Now the third crew issue had already been visited previously before the introduction of aircraft like the 737. In the late 1950s the Lockheed Electra sparked considerable debate among its customer airlines. However, in each of the three cases, the issue was deferred- Eastern's dispute revolved around whether or not the third crew should be a pilot or a flight engineer. In the cases involving National and Western, ALPA used the two-crew issue as a test case to set a precedent (even though the Electra was never intended to be used by two pilots). National put the issue in arbitration that deferred the issue. Western's management was more inflexible and for four months a pilots' strike nearly grounded Western until it was agreed by both parties to defer the issue. So from a precedent standpoint, the impending dispute over the 737 flight deck had no prior rulings or standards to build upon for either side involved. 

In late 1965 Boeing showed a mockup of the 737 cockpit to representatives from United's ALPA union, the FAA, and airline managers. While the FAA felt that the mockup was inconclusive from a certification standpoint, the pilots' union disapproved of the two-man cockpit. A year later, a working mockup that was "functional" and more detailed to test workloads was presented and again the United pilots balked at the layout for two-crew. Not long afterward, ALPA's leadership made it the union's official recommendation that the 737 be operated with a three-man crew at all times. During this same time, the pilots' contract at United was up for negotiation and the 737 crew issue became a major stumbling block in the discussions for a new contract. To further complicate the picture, the FAA at the same time also tentatively approved two-man operation of the 737 pending the start of flight testing in 1967. 

By 1967 the dispute at United still had not been settled and a presidential mediation board was convened to help in reaching a compromise between ALPA and United's management. That summer the board failed in reconciling both sides and a strike vote taken showed 92% of United's pilots in favor of striking if the 737 couldn't be operated by a three-man crew. As an effort to reach out for a compromise, ALPA proposed to the FAA that the 737 as well as the BAC 1-11 and DC-9 be operated with a three-man crew. This proposal provoked the ire of the airlines that already had the One-Eleven and the DC-9 in service and the proposal was quietly shelved with the assent of ALPA members at those other airlines. By this point the dispute was discouraging further US sales of the 737 and indirectly helped Douglas with it's DC-9 which now offered increased capacity versions to regional airlines since it had already set the precedent for two crew operations with the first DC-9 Series 10 models. 

N9013U "Mainliner City of Charlotte"

The 737 made its maiden flight in April 1967 and over the Thanksgiving holiday week of that year, the FAA decided to run a series of tests to put the crew number issue to rest. One of the 737s was borrowed from Boeing and two-crew operations would be tested in the busy Boston-New York-Washington corridor. One pilot was from Boeing, the other pilot from the FAA. Two round-trips were made each day that week in both day and night conditions, both VFR and IFR weather conditions, as well as operations below minimum landing conditions, diversion operations, simulated instrument failures and even simulated crew incapacitation (could one pilot fly the 737 to safety). As a result of these tests, the FAA issued the following statement:

"The far-reaching evaluation of the Boeing 737 was started in September 1965, with the evaluation of the cockpit mock-up. Continuous evaluations over the past two years included regular operations of the aircraft in a high-density air traffic environment to determine workload, complexity, and safety of operations in a fail-safe concept. These flights were part of a very extensive flight-testing programme accomplished by the FAA and Boeing personnel. The technical findings coming out of these evaluations are that the aircraft can be safely flown with a minimum of two pilots."

Certification by the FAA of both the 737-100 and 737-200 followed in December 1967 for full airline operations. 

The third flight deck crew sat on the jumpseat on United 737-200s

Despite the issue being settled by the FAA, several airline pilot unions continued the crew issue as a bargaining chip in labor negotiations with airline management. Anxious to avert a strike in 1967, United reached an agreement with ALPA as part of a broader contract agreement to crew the 737-200 with a crew of three. Western Airlines, Frontier Airlines, and Wien Air Alaska were the only other US airlines bound by contract agreements with the pilots' union to use three crew in the flight deck. Frontier and Wien switched to a two-crew flight deck in 1976 and 1979 respectively. It wasn't until 1981 (ostensibly due to the impending introduction of the 737-300) that United finally went to a two-crew operation on the 737-200. At United, the third crewman sat in the jumpseat which is sited immediately in front of the cockpit door. Duties of the third crewman included preflight, performing the checklists, performance calculations (weight, balance, takeoff and landing distances, etc.) and company communications. All the relevant controls such as radio, electrical, hydraulic and other functions necessary were reachable from the jumpseat. Once United reverted to a two-crew flight deck in 1981, no modifications were necessary to the -200 cockpits.

Source: Boeing 737 (Crowood Aviation Series) by Malcolm L. Hill. Crowood Publishing, 2002, pp 23-31. Photos: Bob Garrard Collection/Flickr, JP Santiago

The Rise of Coach Class Airfares

Prior to the Second World War, several small airlines tried to break into the market by offering low fares, but none of them survived as at the time, passenger operations were only sustainable at charging fares that were roughly 10 cents a mile. The first serious attempt at low fares on a sustained basis came from United Air Lines which started what it called "Sky Coach" service on 10 April 1940 between San Francisco and Los Angeles with intermediate stops with a fare over the whole route coming out to $13.90 (approximately 3.5 cents per mile). The reasoning for the Sky Coach service's low fares were that it would only use 10-passenger Boeing 247s that were already old and paid off, therefore cheaper to operate and would offer a less extravagant level of service than on United's primary services between the two cities. The "Sky Coach" ended on 23 April 1942 with the mobilization of the US airline fleet to support the war effort. 

In the immediate postwar period, the boom in air travel meant there were more passengers than seats and the airlines were in no rush to cut prices. In those days, fares were governed by the US Civil Aeronautics Board (CAB) and any rate cut had to pass their review as not being detrimental to the general interest of the industry and the route in question. If an airline wished to offer low fares, they had to provide rationale to the CAB to approve those fares in the days before deregulation. A growing number of charter and non-scheduled airlines, however, began to slowly nip away at the passenger market that was long the exclusive domain on the established trunk and local service carriers. These airlines offered low-frills services at cut rate prices that eventually forced the established airlines to act. The first out of the block with the first scheduled coach class service in the United States on 4 November 1948 was Capital Airlines on the lucrative Chicago-New York route. Capital charted only 4 cents per mile instead of the standard 6 cents per mile on the route established by the CAB. It justified the coach class fares to the CAB by using older Douglas DC-4s with high-density seating for 60 passengers. Only the minimum of inflight services was provided and the flights were scheduled at off peak hours and late at night so not to detract from Capital's own premium services. After approving Capital's coach class services, other airlines raced to establish their own coach class services and the CAB was so flooded with applications for approval that it was forced to issue a policy statement, apprehensive that the airlines would end up offering services that was out of balance with their operating costs:

"We would caution the carriers that the burden of proof for additional coach class service is clearly on them. We do not propose to allow the indiscriminate extension of coach fares, no do we intend to permit a general debasement of the existing passenger fare level."

Regardless, on a case-by-case basis, the CAB approved numerous other coach class services and within a year of Capital's ground breaking services, coach fares could be found on most major routes. On 27 December 1949, both American Airlines and TWA offered the first transcontinental coach class services on high-density seating DC-4s with several stops. The fares were around $110, and due to the success of the services, in less than a year both airlines replaced the elderly DC-4s with better equipment- American put DC-6s on the routes and TWA put Lockheed Constellations on the coach routes. Curiously, though, United refused to start its own coach services despite its own experiments in 1940 with the Sky Coach. William "Pat" Patterson, United's paternalistic president, warned that expansion of coach fares would lead to chaos in the market and ruin the fare structure of the industry. After holding out, United finally introduced its own coach services on 14 May 1950 with 60-seat DC-4s between Los Angeles and San Francisco at 3 cents per mile. United's services ran at night and at off peak hours until later than summer when Western Air Lines added its own daytime coach services. For the remainder of the year, United and Western fought a small fare war on coach services in California.

To get CAB approval for these services, the airlines had voluntarily imposed all sorts of restrictions on the fares from off-peak schedules, no discounts, no refunds, less on-board amenities, and reduced seat pitch. Most of this was done freely by the industry to protect their own premium services. In 1950 the CAB issued another policy statement that the objective of fares should be to balance the ratio of fares to seating standards so that the net revenue per flight should be the same, irrespective of the ticket prices. This had the effect of eroding many of the previous restrictions on coach fares due to competition- since an airline merely had to demonstrate to the CAB that the net revenue on a given route didn't change much, airlines began to incorporate coach class cabins on their regular flights. Coach fares were now available for daytime flights and peak times. As a result, United set its coach fares on all flights on the West Coast at 4.5 cents per mile and for flights within California, coach fares were set at 3.5 cents per mile. Much to United's surprise (and undoubtedly to that of Pat Patterson), United's coach fares were a huge success and the airline aggressively introduced coach class cabins on its transcontinental services between San Francisco and New York at only $110 on 25 September 1951. 

But the expansion of United's coach class cabins got the attention of the United States Senate's Select Committee on Small Business. The committee investigated the CAB decisions regarding coach class services and found that the Board had unfairly been favoring the established airlines and criticized the CAB's strict policies on charter airlines and non-scheduled airlines that had shown a market for low airfares. So in November 1951 the CAB reversed direction but instead of taking a more favorable approach to the charter and non-scheduled carriers, the CAB denied transcontinental applications of several carriers and instead directed the established airlines to expand coach class fares on their network. Many of the smaller airlines cried foul, but the political influence of the established airlines maintained the CAB's change in policy. The airlines now began to aggressively push coach class fares, particularly on the transcontinental routes by by 1952 the coach class fare between New York and Los Angeles had fallen to $99 and New York to Chicago fell to only $32. By 1955, coach class fares had grown exponentially to the point that on some routes, the coach class cabin took up more space than the first class cabins that once made up the entire cabin of airliners of the day. As traffic soared into the 1960s, the majority of airline passengers in the United States would travel via coach class fares, laying down the foundation for the beginnings of deregulation in the 1970s.

Source: Airlines of the United States Since 1914 by R.E.G. Davies. Smithsonian Institution Press, 1998, p336-338.