With only 87 passengers on board, this baby 747 was ready to bring widebody aircraft design to the regional plane market. Its nose could open right up and allow passengers to disembark and board in under five minutes, and it could land anywhere, from grassy fields, deserts to busy international airports.
This is the concept only, Saab 1073.
There are two projects that were never built that deserve our attention. The first, the Saab regional transport, the 1071 was a multi-use quad rotered powerful cargo plane - that could also be fitted to fly 40-passengers. It would have a range of 1300 km or 863 nautical miles.
Clearly, it was the best of the old technology and would have found a use for regional destinations throughout scandinvia and europe.
There was also a version of the same design that was even smaller, officially called a shrink, that could only carry 15 passengers or two tonnes of cargo.
But this wasn't enough for the rapidly growing regional market. The engineers at Saab realised there was an advantage of bigger aircraft that didn't appear in the market of smaller regional planes. One that use powerful new turbofan engines.
You see, The Boeing 747 has a very unique design feature - its nose can open right up. This allows it to quickly load entire cargo trains, long objects and even but its never been used in the regional market on smaller planes.
The Saab 1037 was created to bring jet travel to the smaller regional market, but take full advantage of the idea of nose swinging door.
When at an airport, the door would open completely swinging 90 degrees and allow passengers to instantly walk right off the plane, or if a cargo version, allow the pallets to be loaded in a continuous train.
This would mean that the cockpit would be situated above the main hold, and give it its mini 747 design.
It was powered by twin turbofan engines and design for short hop routes between regional destinations, like islands or insland cities away from major hubs.
its shoulder-mounted wings allowed for a much lower cabin floor, almost like a truck bed, to ease the loading and off loading of cargo.
because its engines were higher on thes wings, it would have less risk to catch foreign opjects on take off and landing, and thus be suited for airports without asplhat runways.
On its tail, its horizontal stabliser was high to prevent the noise from the jet exhaust on take off and landings.
It was designed to carry around 87 passengers, up to a range of 2414 km or 1300 nautical miles. This was a short range, but it was actually made for shorter hops, taking off, flying roughly 500 nautical miles and then landing again, about an hour flight between destinations ferrying passengers from regional centers to hubs.
For luggage, the passengers suitcases would have been stored in the swing nose. Passengers would not have had to check in the luggage, and taken it onboard like a train. For longer flights, Saab invisioned a galley in the nose for food (which would swing out at airports), as well as more bathrooms.
lastly, saab thought this would be the first of many versions of this plane, thinking of a 100 seater and even up to much higher - perhaps even competiting with the Boeing 737-100. We would have seen increased range and more powerful engines.
Saab also wanted to reinvent the way that airport terminals worked as well.
On the left would be the arrival hall, where passengers would quickly leave in two minutes and walk through, then a large swinging door would then allow access for the right depature foyer to walk onto the plane, placing their luggage in the nose and then taking their seats.
We could have seen it fly feed routes at almost every major hub, forming the backbone of many different regional networks that today are performed by aircraft like the Embraer or Turboprops. This plane would have also been useful for flights to airports within cities, such as London City, and Toronto City, that can't take big aircraft.
There would also be military applications.I also would not rule out a private jet version - think of it as the poor mans 747!
Looking at it now and the advantages of this cargo loading process, it is almost strange that a baby 747 hasn't yet been built.
But the biggest impact would have been on the aviation industry. This plane design would have come out around during the early days of the 737, which we know would go on to have tremendous success. But it gets a bit more stewy when you think about the Airbus A320. Airbus was a European consortium building a regional aircraft. If the Saab 1073 had been successful, it is unlikely that Airbus would have moved ahead.
I don't normally give a personal opinion about never-built projects, but this is truly one of the biggest missed opportunities in aviation and its a shame that it was never built. Thanks for learning about the baby 747 that could have been.