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...