Saab 1073: The Little Jet That Could Have Revolutionized Passenger Boarding

In the late 1960s, however, Saab rethought the entire system and proposed an innovative solution in the form of the 80-87 passenger Saab 1073 short-range airliner.

Taking a step back and examining the start-to-finish cycle of each individual flight with special attention to frequent, short-haul flights, the company identified a significant bottleneck that created an inordinate delay in completing each flight—passenger boarding and deplaning. Saab engineers reasoned that if they could find a way to expedite the process,  turnaround time could be reduced. If they could shorten the turnaround time significantly enough, airlines could potentially squeeze an extra flight into each day. And this would result in additional profits without having to add additional aircraft.

The trick would be finding a way to eliminate the literal passenger bottleneck. It was here that Saab thought outside of the box—and potentially glanced over toward Seattle for some design inspiration.

There, Boeing was hard at work designing and launching the game-changing 747. While the giant airliner wasn’t the first to incorporate an upper deck—and other aircraft have incorporated a swing-away nose to expedite the loading and unloading of palletized cargo—the 747 was perhaps the first civil jet to combine the two. Saab saw a unique opportunity to adapt the concept to a short-haul regional airliner.

The company came up with a design that resembled a miniature 747, incorporating a tiny upper deck for the cockpit. This made the entire length of the main deck available for passengers and baggage. Critically, it removed an obstacle to speedy boarding and deplaning. Without the cockpit in the way, the only thing between passengers and the terminal was the nose cone, which, like the freighter version of the 747, could be hinged.

By integrating a nose that swung to the side, Saab could achieve two things. First, it could create a dedicated cargo area where passengers could easily toss their bags. Rather than spend 15-30 seconds fumbling with overhead bins and holding up the line, each passenger could stow their bags in just a few seconds the instant they boarded the jet, almost without breaking  stride.

Second, when paired with a terminal design custom-tailored to the 1073, the physical bottleneck of a jet bridge could be eliminated. Guided by a hinged divider wall, deplaning passengers could be funneled into a dedicated arrival area, entirely separate from those waiting to board in their own dedicated area on the other side of the wall. 

Equipped with a new thrust reverser design that was specifically engineered to eliminate reingestion of exhaust gases, the 1073 could back away from the terminal without the aid of a tug, further reducing the amount of time required on the ground. So optimistic was Saab in the aggregate time savings, it projected a total turnaround time—encompassing the unloading of arriving passengers as well as the boarding of departing ones—of only five minutes.

The 1073 concept also attempted to capitalize on a rapidly developing concept among air travel planners of the 1970s—small, inner-city airports with short runways enabled by short takeoff and landing (STOL) airliner designs. Short-field capability and a low-noise footprint were design goals, as was the capability to fly three full-payload, 100-mile stages without refueling. The design was also envisioned to be future-proofed to a degree through future fuselage stretches.

Unfortunately, none of the innovations introduced by the 1073 would prove to offer enough benefit to bring the little jet into production. The design would remain just that on paper, the jet would never take to the skies, and passengers would continue to be subjected to slow lines and stuffed overhead bins.