Aerospace Notebook: 'Father' of 747 says it might endure
Aerospace Notebook: 'Father' of 747 says it might endure
Seattle Post-Intelligencer 01/12/05
author: James Wallace
It is in Toulouse, on Tuesday, that Airbus will roll out the first A380, the 555-passenger double-decker behemoth that will displace Sutter's 747 as the world's biggest commercial jetliner when it enters service next year.
This promises to be the splashiest jetliner rollout ceremony the industry has seen since Boeing unveiled the first 747-100 jumbo at its sprawling new Everett plant Sept. 30, 1968. As thousands watched that day, Boeing's three other passenger jets -- the 707, 727 and 737 -- were flown by in a salute to the new plane with the distinctive hump behind the cockpit that would become known as the Queen of the Skies.
"The big question is, 'What kind of an airplane is it?' " Sutter said of the A380. "Will it satisfy the customers? That's the 64-million-dollar question, and only time will tell."
Often called the "father of the 747," Sutter led the design team that developed the 747 more than 35 years ago.
Although he retired from Boeing 18 years ago, Sutter, soon to be 84 years old but still razor-sharp, has continued to work for the company as a paid consultant, even keeping an office at Boeing Commercial Airplane headquarters in Renton.
When he is not wintering in Hawaii, and banging out golf balls, Sutter lives in West Seattle, in a home that overlooks the ferry terminal.
Give credit to Airbus, Sutter said last week in a telephone interview.
"It was a big industrial achievement," he said of the A380 development program. "They got the governments behind this tremendous project and, by God, they did it."
But there's the rub, Sutter added.
France, Germany, Britain and Spain provided Airbus with loans for up to 33 percent of the development costs of the A380, which Airbus recently acknowledged had grown by about 15 percent over its original $10.7 billion budget.
These government subsidies, available by treaty to Airbus for new jetliner development programs, are at the center of a World Trade Organization complaint that the U.S. government filed late last year. The United States, and Boeing, are demanding an end to the Airbus launch aid.
When Boeing started development of the 747 in the 1960s, "it was the other way around," Sutter said.
"Boeing had to build its own railways, its own highways and use its own money, of which it did not have much," he said. "The way Europe does business and the way the U.S. does business are completely different."
Airbus has so far received 139 firm orders for its superjumbo, not including 10 A380 cargo models that Atlanta-based United Parcel Service announced Monday that it will order.
That will give Airbus 27 orders for the A380 freighter from four customers -- FedEx, Emirates, International Lease Finance Corp. and now UPS.
Even so, Sutter believes the fundamental problem for Airbus and the A380 is that it was not designed from the start to be both a freighter and passenger jet.
"We gave equal weight to both of those designs," he said of the 747. "I think the Airbus airplane was designed as a passenger jet, and the freighter was given second fiddle."
The A380 freighter is too heavy, even though it can carry more cargo than the 747, Sutter said.
"It can carry a lot of load and not make a lot of money."
Also, he added, the double-deck design is not ideal for a freighter.
The white-haired Sutter knows a thing or two about double-deck aircraft. He almost had to build one for Juan Trippe, the Pan American World Airways boss whose 25-plane order started development of the 747 program in 1966.
"Juan Trippe was double-decker-happy," Sutter recalled.
Until the day Sutter invited Trippe and other Pan American executives to check out a double-decker mock-up Boeing had constructed.
Boeing boss Bill Allen took Trippe and his party up to the top of the mock-up. Sutter stayed below -- way below. Sutter wanted Trippe to try an emergency slide that had been set up from the upper deck. Trippe refused and quickly came back down the shaky stairs.
Trippe was then taken to single-deck mock-up with the wide cabin that would become the hallmark of the 747 interior.
"He walked into that wide single-deck mock-up, and he didn't say a word," Sutter recalled. "But you knew that was the way he wanted to go."
There was one last visit that day, to a mock-up of the cockpit, which would be situated above the main cabin. For aerodynamic reasons, Boeing had created a large empty space just behind the cockpit. It would become the 747's signature hump.
Sutter recalled that Trippe turned to John Borger, a Pan Am engineer, and asked what the space was for.
Borger replied that it could be used for crew rest, Sutter recalled.
"This will be for passengers," Trippe replied.
Sutter was against a full double-deck 747 design for two main reasons. He was worried about slide interference with the wings from the upper deck in case of an emergency evacuation. And the two-deck design would leave little room for the 747 to carry a lot of cargo in its belly.
The son of a Slovenian immigrant who became a meat cutter, Sutter developed an interest in airplanes early. He always stopped to watch the planes flying out of Boeing Field when he delivered newspapers as a boy on his Georgetown paper route. He would later graduate at the top of his aeronautical engineering class at the University of Washington.
He joined Boeing in 1945, just out of the Navy, after World War II.
At Boeing, Sutter's brilliance as an engineer would lead him to prominent roles in the development of nearly every Boeing jetliner.
The salty Sutter, who had a well-deserved reputation for explosive, profanity-laced outbursts that became known in the company as "Sutter's Runaways," has for years been urging Boeing executives to give the 747 more range and seats.
In the late 1990s, Boeing considered development of a stretched 747X and was shopping the plane to potential customers, who at that time were also being pressed by Airbus to buy the A380.
Sutter's reputation in the world of big airplanes was such that Boeing executives took him along on their most important sales campaign for the 747X -- to Singapore Airlines.
Top airline officials greeted Sutter as if he were an engineering god.
Singapore Airlines, however, ordered the A380.
Boeing soon abandoned the 747X project.
Today, Boeing is considering what it calls the 747 Advanced, which would seat around 450 passengers, up from 416 carried by the 747-400. It would be ready in 2009 and would use the fuel-efficient engines under development for the 7E7.
Sutter believes there is a place in the market for both the 747 Advanced and the A380 -- as both freighters and passenger planes.
"How they fit into the market is the question mark," he said.
"If Boeing does its part," Sutter said, "the 747 can hold its own and even be the winner."
The famous Boeing engineer recalled a speech he gave about a year ago to the Royal Aeronautical Society. Sutter is one of the few Americans granted an honorary fellowship in the prestigious 138-year-old British organization.
In his speech, Sutter reflected on the fact that all the other big jets developed for the same market spot as the 747 had disappeared from production. Only the 747 remained.
"Twenty years from now," Sutter said last week," it could be that the 747 is the airplane that's left and the A380 has also disappeared."
Spoken like a very proud father.