No High Hopes For Jumbo Jet

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32209, 30 January 1970, Page 13

No High Hopes For Jumbo Jet

(N.Z. Press Assn.—Copyright) LONDON, Jan. 29. A leading article in “The Times” last Saturday praised the American public for the calm with which they have treated the delays on the first flights of the jumbo jet. The explanation is simple —no-one expected the thing to work in the first place, the newspaper’s New York correspondent, Michael Leapman writes: “Transport delays and breakdowns are the rule rather than the exception in the United States,” he says. “Americans have come to recognise and accept that

every technological advance brings with it a growing number of mechanisms that can go wrong.” Leapman says that Americans had no faith that aircraft would leave or arrive anywhere on time. When they did, something else often delayed the passengers. , “The other day my aircraft from the south arrived a few minutes early—and then I had to wait an hour for my suitcase because the door of the baggage compartment was stuck.”

Leapman continues: “In my 10 weeks here I have been stuck for half an hour in the lift of a department store, have been imprisoned in an underground train for 10 minutes because the doors would not open, and have taken an hour to travel the 10 miles by train to Newark, New Jersey. “When New, York office

workers turn up late, especially in the winter, the automatic and generally accurate assumption is that they have been delayed on the way—not, as in Britain, that they have overslept.

“Business appointments are not regarded as specific assignations, rather as general aspirations of an intention to show up somewhere at about the agreed time. “Almost everything in New York takes about half as long again as an equivalent transaction in London. Buses are the most relaxing form of

transport in the city (taxis tend to be wild and terrifying), but are inordinately slow because of the perpetual Manhattan traffic jam. “Sometimes travellers are driven to take direct action. Twice last week passengers ‘hijacked’ underground trains, making them go farther than their scheduled

• terminus because trains for • more distant stops just ! failed to appear. > “Like hijacked pilots, the • drivers acceded to the r demands with little resistance, because on a crowded

underground train it is a fair bet that some of the passengers carry knives. “City, state and national officials constantly announce plans to improve transport services. Last week the Public Service Commission said it would sue one railway company for chronic failure to stick to its timetables.

“No-one really expects any improvement though. Americans now await with masochistic expectation the arrival of the supersonic jets which, however short they cut the theoretical flying time across the Atlantic, seem certain in practice to multiply the opportunities for delay to actual passengers.”