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Luxury, comfort and fast trips at low fares features the flying Leviathans of tomerrow's airway
YOU are tired of lolling around in the deeply upholstered seats and have lost interest in the scenery. After admiring the stateroom's fine wood paneling, fiddling with adjustable polaroid windows, which reduce the sun's glare, and wondering where they bought those rich carpets, you feel the need of a drink. Up you go to the top deck where mirror-lined walls reflect lovely lafties. You drop into a leather easy chair, and order a White Horse and soda.
Over the drink you wonder what happened to those bucking bucket seats, which induced creeping paralysis after the first five minutes on the long run from Guam to Oahu. For this is the lush comfort of a sky liner, the post-war passenger plane of a type now going into operation all over the United States.
Accommodations and conveniences never before attempted in commercial air transportation are planned by all major lines. Flying leviathans, with spacious pressurized cabins, will have enormous capacity and high speeds, factors which should mean unprecedented low fares not possible in smaller transports.
The first of these luxury liners, Lockheed's Constellation, Boeing's Stratocruiser and the Douglas Skymaster, already are winging across continents and oceans in record time. The Constellation, easily identifiable by its shark shape and three tail fins, is in the air for Transcontinental & Western Air. Its maximum capacity is 64 passengers. A more deluxe version of it will accommodate just 48 passengers, who, however, would have use of a bar lounge in the forward section of the cabin.
For night flights the Constellation has berth space for 24 passengers. This plane is big. It has a 123-foot wing span and an overall length of 95 feet. But soon it will be dwarfed by Lockheed's double-decker L-89, called the Constitution, which will carry 128 passengers and a crew of 11.
The Constitution will have nine staterooms, each containing two berths, 12 additional berths, 89 reclining chairs, several rest rooms and a cook's galley. Several major lines have an eye on it for the Latin American service.
The third projected step in plane development of the immediate future is represented...