Deja Vu – WSJ.com Why didn’t they imagine that more people might want to fly? How can I not ignore those opportunities? “The giant airplane of 300- to 400-passenger capacity, while technically possible,” wrote a U.S. aviation official in 1944, “appears to offer little economic advantage and to involve a great sacrifice of convenience for the traveler, owing to the inevitable reduction in scheduling frequency which results from using such large units.”