WBEZ | aviation

Death of a pioneer

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 05:00:00 -0500

As a black woman, pioneer aviator Elizabeth Coleman overcame two career obstacles before dying in a flying accidentt on April 30, 1926.

Coleman—always known as Bessie—was born into a large family of Texas cotton farmers in 1892. She joined the great migration north in 1915, settling in Chicago. Her first job was as a manicurist.

Coleman was intrigued by stories of combat flying during World War I. Yet when the war ended, no American flight school would accept her. She had to go abroad to achieve her dream.

She learned French, saved her money, and got financial help from Defender publisher Robert S. Abbott and other businessmen. She went to France and earned her pilot’s license. Finally, in 1921, Bessie Coleman returned to the U.S. as the country’s first female African-American flier.

Commercial aviation was in its infancy. Coleman could become either a mail pilot or a stunt flier. Both were dangerous jobs, but stunt flying paid better.

Coleman was young, attractive, and extroverted. Performing appealed to her. She joined the circuit of air thrill shows. Now her gender and race worked to her advantage, giving her added publicity value. Back in Chicago, her friends at the Defender printed detailed accounts of her many triumphs.

On April 30, 1926, Coleman was in Jacksonville, Florida. An air show was scheduled for the next day. With her mechanic at the controls of her open plane, Coleman took off to scout out the area. Coleman wasn’t strapped in. She wanted more freedom to see over the edge of the plane.

About ten minutes into the flight, the plane suddenly went into a spin. Coleman was thrown from the cockpit and fell to her death. The plane crashed, killing the mechanic. As it turned out, the cause of the accident was dreadfully simple–a loose wrench had fallen into the gears and jammed them.

The air show was cancelled. Coleman’s body was returned to Chicago, where more than 10,000 people filed past her coffin in Pilgrim Baptist Church. She was buried at Lincoln Cemetery in Alsip. For many years afterward, African-American pilots performed an annual fly-over of her grave.

In 1995 the U.S. postal service honored Chicago’s aviation pioneer with a Black Heritage commemorative stamp. And today one of the streets at O’Hare Airport is named Bessie Coleman Drive.

Katie and Howard come to Chicago

Wed, 23 Jan 2013 05:00:00 -0600

The Ambassador East was hosting two of 1937’s hottest celebrities. The question on everyone’s mind was–would Katharine Hepburn and Howard Hughes get married in Chicago?

At 29, Hepburn had already won an Oscar as Best Actress. She was in town appearing in a stage version of “Jane Eyre.” Hughes was a dashing 30-year-old oil millionaire who had become a Hollywood producer. He was also a famous aviator.

On January 19, Hughes broke his own speed record by flying from Los Angeles to New York in 7 hours, 28 minutes. Then he flew to Chicago and checked into Hepburn’s hotel. He got a separate room, three floors away. That’s the way things were done in 1937.

The wedding rumors started immediately. County Clerk Michael Flynn helped the story by announcing he was ready to personally issue a marriage license to Katie and Howard. When the County Building opened for business on January 21, a crowd had already gathered, hoping to catch a glimpse of the happy couple.

By mid-day, over 3,000 people clogged the corridors. Many in the throng were County employees who had abandoned their offices to join the stake-out. The few couples who came for their own marriage licenses had trouble getting through the mob.

Closing time arrived. Hepburn and Hughes still hadn’t shown up. Now attention shifted to the Ambassador East, where photographers and hundreds more fans kept vigil. Hepburn finally emerged and left for the theater, without Hughes. The paparazzi followed.

After the performance, Hepburn tried to avoid her pursuers with a decoy–she dressed her maid in a mink jacket and slacks, and sent the woman off in a cab. The trick didn’t work. When the actress did leave, the press was still on her tail.

Hepburn returned to the hotel at 3 a.m., accompanied by her co-star. When one waiting photographer snapped a picture, the escort stepped forward and smashed the camera. Meanwhile, Hughes remained out of sight.

Katharine Hepburn and Howard Hughes never did get married, in Chicago or anyplace else. They eventually went their separate ways. Hughes became a billionaire and died an eccentric recluse in 1976. Hepburn won three more Oscars and lived to be 96.

As a post-script, Cate Blanchett later won an Academy Award for portraying Hepburn in the Howard Hughes biography film, The Aviator. Does that count as a fifth Oscar for Katie H?

Astrophysicist shows why it takes so long to board a plane

Mon, 29 Aug 2011 04:14:00 -0500

Inviting passengers to board a plane all at once would likely fill it faster than the methods most airlines use. If that sounds counterintuitive, consider that it took an astrophysicist to figure it out.

Jason Steffen experienced a problem many of us have run into: when it’s finally time to board the plan, someone (or several people) holds up the whole operation trying to cram an oversized suitcase into the overhead bid. But unlike most of us, Steffen happens to be a Fermilab physicist, with a knack for computer models. So he ran one testing different methods of boarding.

He tested methods where people board from back to front, or window seats followed by middle and aisle. He also tested the time-honored process of boarding in blocks of rows, as passengers have been doing for years. Steffen’s model predicted letting passengers board at random would be quicker than the back-to-front or block boarding models, meaning his calculations show those methods actually slow things down.

Now he’s publishing results from an experiment, which confirm it. He and a producer from the online video show “This vs That” recruited 72 people to act as passengers. They went to a replica airplane that matched the real deal in dimensions and seat layout, housed on a Hollywood soundstage. There, the passengers tried out the five different methods.

In this one trial, anyway, the random boarding was more efficient than filling the plane in blocks or front-to-back. The window-seat-first method took second place. The fastest method is one of Steffen’s own design: boarding alternating rows at the same time, starting with the window seats. The secret, he says, is that it leaves passengers elbow room to stow their luggage at the same time.

Steffen published his predictions three years ago, but got no inquiries from the airlines. He wonders if now, with his experimental results, they might start paying attention.

“Before they could have said, look, this guy’s a crackpot. So what if he wrote some software? We want real data with real passengers,” Steffen said. “Now that we have that, I guess we’ll see.”

The results are published in the science collection, arXiv.

Miracle at Glenview: Remembering Flight 383

Fri, 19 Aug 2011 12:15:00 -0500

"There's good news tonight!"

That's the way a popular radio commentator opened his program during the 1940s. And in Chicago on this August 19th in 1948, there indeed was good news.

World War II had been over for three years. Though civilian air travel was starting to grow, much of the public was still nervous about getting on a plane. There always seemed to be some spectacular air crash in the headlines.

American Airlines Flight 383 was routed from New York to Chicago, with three stops along the way. It was scheduled to arrive at Midway Airport at 4 PM. On the final leg of the trip, pilot Eddie Cycon discovered that the plane's front wheels were jammed and would not descend.

Cycon's twin-engine, propeller-driven craft was cruising at 300 mph, and had 250 gallons of fuel left. He radioed Midway traffic control. After consultation, Cycon was advised to set down at Glenview Naval Air Station, which had the best facilities for handling emergency landings.

Before he could attempt a landing, Cycon had to burn off the excess fuel. So when he reached Midway, he circled the field for an hour. Meanwhile, back in the cabin, stewardess Agnes Mae Vaughn was soothing the 35 passengers and making sure they were all securely strapped in.

At 5:15 Cycon notified Glenview he was ready. He came in nose-up. The plane touched down on its rear wheels and skidded a half-mile. Despite Cycon's best efforts, the front of the craft dipped as it slowed down. The nose hit the runway. Sparks flew. A last, harrowing 300 yards--and the plane stopped.

The five emergency doors opened, and the passengers quickly exited, sliding down nylon ropes. Within two minutes the plane was empty. Over a hundred naval fire-fighters were standing ready. But an examination of the plane showed there had been no structural damage.

Except for a woman who fainted and had to be carried off on a stretcher, there were no injuries. Pilot Eddie Cycon and first officer Erwin Boldt were hailed as heroes. Stewardess Agnes Mae Vaughn was praised for her calm, professional performance.

Only Vaughn knew how much effort that had taken. American 383 had been her first flight.

Why a Balbo?

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 12:15:00 -0500

In 1933 Chicago staged a World’s Fair in Burnham Park. July 15 marked one of the Fair’s highlights. Shortly after 6 p.m., the Balbo Air Squadron arrived in the waters of Lake Michigan.

Aviation was still exciting and dangerous in 1933 — only six years had passed since Lindbergh’s trans-Atlantic flight. Now General Italo Balbo, head of the Italian Air Force, had brought his fleet of 24 seaplanes on a goodwill trip from Rome to Chicago. Because of bad weather and an accident along the way, the journey had taken two weeks.

But now they were here, safely moored off Navy Pier. A few minutes after the landing, Balbo himself strolled onto the deck of his seaplane, coolly surveying the cheering thousands who had gathered on shore—he looked as if he were “going to afternoon tea,” one reporter wrote. The General lit a cigarette and smiled.

For the next three days, the city went Balbo-crazy. The General and his fliers were feted with a rally in Soldier Field, speeches, parades, banquets, and proclamations. Seventh Street was renamed Balbo Drive. The hoopla was so outrageous the Marx Brothers spoofed it in their movie A Night at the Opera. Then, at the end of the three days, the intrepid crew flew back to Rome.

That’s the way it looked in 1933. But as Paul Harvey used to say, now for the rest of the story . . .

The Italian government that sponsored the Balbo Air Squadron was the Fascist government of Benito Mussolini. Balbo himself was a true believer, often referred to as the Duce’s “right-hand man.” The brutality of the Fascist regime was already well-known.

Still, many apologists accepted such “difficulties” as the price of progress. One bit of wisdom declared: “Mussolini may be bad, but he makes the trains run on time.”

So Chicago took Balbo to its heart. And on the first anniversary of the flight, the city accepted an ancient temple column as a gift from the Italian government. The Balbo Column was erected in the park east of Soldier Field.

General Italo Balbo was killed in 1940, his plane hit by friendly fire. There was suspicion that Mussolini ordered an assassination to remove a popular rival.

Today in Chicago, Balbo Drive remains. From time to time, there’s talk that the name should be changed. The simplest solution would be to make it “Balboa Drive,” after the old Spanish explorer. That’s what most Chicagoans call it anyway.

The Balbo Column also remains. Its florid inscription mentions Mussolini and “the Fascist Era.” Unfortunately, the words are carved into the stone base. If they’d used a copper plate like most other monuments, it would have been stolen by now, and we wouldn’t have to be embarrassed by the sentiment.

The area where the column stands is now known as Gold Star Families Memorial Park, in honor of police officers who have been killed in the line of duty. Why not put a new plaque on the column and re-dedicate it to them? Sometimes historical revisionism does make sense.

Protests of full-body scans could slow holiday travelers

Tue, 23 Nov 2010 11:00:00 -0600

Loosely organized, internet boycotts of airport body scans could slow down travelers over the Thanksgiving holiday.

The National Opt-Out Day protest is scheduled for Wednesday, which is traditionally the busiest travel day of the year. At issue are full-body scans that show a traveler's physical contours on a computer.

The American Civil Liberties Union is not involved with the protests. But local ACLU spokesman Ed Yohnka said neither the scans nor the optional pat-downs actually make flights more secure. "We're getting the worst of both worlds. We're not advancing our security interests, while at the same time Americans who are flying at the holiday season are having to make the ugly choice between these embarrassing naked scans or having themselves groped by strangers," Yohnka said.

Body scans take as little as 10 seconds, but people who decline the process must submit to a full pat-down, which takes much longer. Even if only a small percentage of passengers opt-out of the body scan, experts say it could mean longer lines, bigger delays and hotter tempers.

Chicago Department of Aviation spokeswoman Karen Pride said the airports plan to bring in extra workers for the holiday.