Quote:
Bloomberg Suggests Return Of Seaplanes To Ease Airport Congestion
POSTED: 8:34 am EDT June 19, 2006
UPDATED: 8:35 am EDT June 19, 2006
NEW YORK -- More than 60 years after the Pan American flying boat Yankee Clipper departed Long Island Sound on its last trans-Atlantic flight, New York's mayor says it may be time to resurrect the seaplane -- not to restore the romance of aviation's "golden age," but to ease pressure on the city's crowded airports.
During a recent radio show, Mayor Michael Bloomberg noted that airport and ground facilities lag behind the growth of intercontinental jet travel, and said congestion would increase as Gotham's population reaches an estimated 9 million in the next 15 years.
"People are going to fly more and more, that's the wave of the future," said Bloomberg. Riding that wave, he suggested, could be the seaplane.
"If you take a look at a map, one thing we have going for us is an enormous runway all around -- it's called the water," he said. "For local, short flights, to let's say, Boston, Chicago, Atlanta, Florida ... you can land out away from everybody and then taxi in."
While Bloomberg is not noted for flights of fancy, his remarks conjured up images of the China Clipper, Yankee Clipper and other famous flying boats that spanned oceans in the 1930s, an aviation heyday cut short by World War II and killed off by the jet age.
Bloomberg, a licensed pilot who flies his own helicopter, anticipated practical questions -- such as who would build a new generation of large commercial seaplanes, and where they might land and take off.
LaGuardia Airport's Marine Air Terminal, the New York base for the Pan Am flying boats, fell into neglect after their demise. Since refurbished as an art-deco landmark, with a mural depicting "Flight" and a model Clipper hanging from the ceiling to evoke the bygone era, it still serves corporate aircraft and Delta Airlines' shuttle to Chicago.
Pan Am's 28 Clippers saw wartime service and were gone, mostly scrapped, by 1950. The Dixie Clipper, a Boeing 314 that inaugurated the trans-Atlantic route in June 1939, became the forerunner of Air Force One by carrying President Franklin D. Roosevelt to a Casablanca meeting with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1943. That same year, the Yankee Clipper crashed and sank near Lisbon.
Not all seaplanes followed the Clippers into oblivion, but most today are small aircraft built in Canada, Japan and the United States. They're used for short commuter flights and island-hopping sightseers.
Only Russia builds what Bloomberg called "enormous seaplanes" that carry 50 or 100 people. He apparently meant the Beriev Be-200, a 72-seat passenger plane derived from a military jet called the Albatross. With no airline takers, it is so far a commercial flop.
Bloomberg spokesman Stu Loeser said Bloomberg was serious about the seaplane idea.
"New York is surrounded by water and it is a great resource," he said. "The problem is that we have too many flights and not enough spots, and the mayor feels that in a broad vision, seaplanes are an obvious alternative. There are no seaplanes on the market now, but there could be."
Spokesmen at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, which operates the region's three major airports -- Newark Liberty, LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy International -- refused to return repeated calls seeking comment.
Elsewhere, Bloomberg's idea was greeted with skepticism.
"It's absolutely fabulous -- just as soon as we bring back the Hindenburg," said Michael Boyd, president of the Boyd Group, an aviation consulting firm in Denver. "It's so far out he might as well be talking about intergalactic travel."
The Hindenburg was a German dirigible destroyed by fire as it landed at Lakehurst, N.J., in 1937, a death-knell for commercial airships.
In a telephone interview, Boyd said seaplane technology "has long since been leapfrogged by aviation advances," and environmental issues "would be huge." The mayor had dismissed those concerns, saying there were "no environmental issues to speak of."
As one example, Boyd said, salt-water corrosion would be a serious problem for the amphibious planes. "Nobody remembers that those Boeing Clippers needed a three-day turnaround. They had to be hosed down after every flight," he said.
