Tag: trijet

McDonnell Douglas DC-10: Your Ultimate Guide

23Jul

By Salomón Marco1 Comment

Aircraft Digest

McDonnell Douglas DC-10: Your Ultimate Guide

It is 1985 and you are on a flight from Los Angeles to Copenhagen. Chances are, you are on a DC-10, but this is not by chance. The DC-10 was built for this. The DC-10 was a workhorse of its time. An icon in aviation history. The aircraft was met with scrutiny and a lack of confidence after some incidents and accidents following its introduction into service. Despite this, the DC- 10 secured its place in the history books as a reliable, easy to maintain, and economically viable jetliner. The DC- 10 family capitalized on the gap between the smaller twinjet airliners and the larger quadjet airliners like the Boeing 747. The market desperately needed an aircraft that could reach further with less. The DC-10 delivered. The DC-10 featured advanced avio...

14May

By Alexander MonteverdeNo Comments

History

Why Did They Stop Making Trijets?

Looking through my father's old pictures of Heathrow Airport from the seventies and eighties, I can't help but notice all the trijets. Aircraft like the 727, TriStar and DC-10 are seemingly everywhere, whilst twinjets an quadjets were a rarity. Look at it today, however, it is the complete opposite; twinjets are the most common, quadjets, whilst still popular are nowhere near as common as before and trijets are seemingly nonexistent. So why did trijets fall so much out of favor? Though the extension of ETOPS regulations is the most common reason why manufacturers stopped producing trijets, it was also a combination of comparable higher operating costs and a change in the way we fly that ultimately sealed the fate of trijets. Most production of trijets ceased in the 1990s...