Retro Name Will Be Matched By Retro Design

04.01.05 Special Edition: After a major crisis caused by the looming exhaustion of middle digits for Boeing's well-known 7x7 naming convention, the management of the company has found a solution.

"Retro design is big," a Boeing press release said. "And we have embraced it fully with the 707 Mark II, which has been designed from the ground up to resemble the plane that ushered in the Jet Age. From the hat racks to the ash trays, this is a plane that shows you the past has a future."

Asked what that meant, a spokesman blinked several times and repeated it verbatim.

The 707 MkII conceals its four turbofans in long, slimming nacelles. "We had some real engineering challenges. Fortunately, Pratt and Whitney figured out how to make a skinny high-bypass turbofan." It even has the mass balance on the tailfin characteristic of the original 707.

"We tried it in aluminum and it really messed up the control surface balance. So it's actually made from a cardboard tube and balsa nose cone from an Estes rocket. You're not recording this, right?" a Boeing engineer told us.

Asked who had expressed interest in the new plane, a Boeing spokesman said the company hoped to sell to Eastern, Piedmont, Braniff, TWA, and Pan Am but was having some trouble raising executives there.

Airbus Industrie has also been working on a retro design, possibly resembling the 707's unlucky competitor, the DeHavilland Comet. Recent activity near Marseilles, not far from Airbus's Toulouse home, has included chartering a number of deepwater salvage vessels, which may or may not be related to this project.

But at Boeing, the retro enthusiasm knows no bounds. "We are suggesting to the lines that they bring mini-skirts back for the flight attendants. We thought that the male ones would have pushed back on that, but some of them have been the most enthusiastic. We're trying to evoke the Jet Age, an era when flying was actually pleasant."

And, of course, profitable.

"It could have been worse," a Boeing insider told Aero-News. "I know for a fact that they interviewed Chris Bangle from BMW, who designed all those deformed-looking Beemers."

In the end, Bangle's suggestion that the cargo doors have humps like Quasimodo weighed heavily against his candidacy. Boeing promises a gala launch for the aircraft (as anticipated in the artist's conception shown above), which they expect to happen in exactly twelve months.

"Who did you say you were with? 'The Saturday Evening Post'?"

FMI: www.boeingclassicjets.com