Airliner Number 4

Airliner Number 4 was a design by Norman Bel Geddes and Otto A. Koller for a 9-deck amphibious passenger aircraft intended to replace the large transatlantic liners that traveled between Europe and North America before the Second World War.

[1] He was in the habit of giving his staff ambitious or unusual projects when they were between client commissions such as "Get a thousand luxury lovers from New York to Paris fast.

Koller then declined to provide performance specifications for its replacement, Airliner Number 4, which Geddes intended to include for publicity purposes in his upcoming book Horizons (Little Brown, New York, 1932).

[6] Designed as a V-shaped monoplane with nine decks, large capacity, viewing galleries, and public areas big enough to hold an orchestra, Geddes intended Airliner Number 4 to replace the ocean liner.

[3] Geddes described Airliner Number 4 as an "airship" in Horizons (p. 111) and compared his design with that of the largest aircraft so far built — as far as he was aware — the 48-meter wingspan Dornier Do X, which he said could carry 150 people, but not in comfort.

[9] Airliner Number 4 received widespread publicity and featured in The Detroit News in January 1933, drawn by J. L. Kraemer alongside photographs of other Geddes designs.

[14] Papers relating to Airliner Number 4 are held in the Norman Bel Geddes Collection of the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.