Douglas DC-10 Twin - A Self-Destructive Dream
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 28 พ.ค. 2024
- Greetings to all! :D
In the 1970s, the newly formed McDonnell Douglas was faced with a golden opportunity to steal back the ground lost to Boeing during the previous decade by cornering the market for American-built twinjet widebody airliners, with the DC-10 Twin being envisaged as a two-engined variant of the initially promising trijet that was released in 1971.
Sadly, the divisions of the 1967 merger to form McDonnell Douglas led to a severe lack of unity when it came to forward planning, and the DC-10 Twin, through various permutations, would continue to linger throughout the decades as the company's attempt to regain its fallen market share, only for the likes of Airbus and Boeing to have completely sown up any hope of a return to the mainstream of global commercial aviation.
Chapters:
0:00 - Preamble
0:51 - Early Concepts
2:40 - French Connection
4:33 - A Clear Playing Field
6:00 - Opportunity Missed
8:30 - Second Time Around
10:29 - French Connection II
12:01 - The Market Closes In
14:45 - Struggling for Second Place
17:32 - Enter the MD-11
19:25 - Facing The End
22:07 - Conclusion
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References:
- Airline Ratings (and their respective references)
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- Wikipedia (and its respective references) - ยานยนต์และพาหนะ
Airbus dodged a bullet there! MDD went on to ruin Boeing instead.
Former Boeing personnel have created a very elaborate story about none of it is their fault, how they were engineers at every level of the company and how the MDD merger ruined it. The truth is Boeing's whole cut corners scheme has been going on ever since airline deregulation, where Boeing stock plummeted, cutting costs on safety was the new scheme. Don't think people forgot about Boeing's lies to the NTSB regarding the rudder hardover incidents in the 1990s.
♫ You picked a fine time to leave me loose wheel...♪
Except the beautiful F15....
Boeing is doing a good job of ruining itself.
No Boeing ruined themselves
The last clean-sheet design launched by Boeing is the 787, announced in 2006, first flew in 2009. That's 15 years ago. Boeing is now where MD was in the late 1980's, and due to the exact same management decisions.
Very true. Correct parallel between MD-11 and 737 Max. I think both types are great, but they are undeniably janky solutions.
And the 787 isn't even all Boeing's -- they leaned hard on subcontractors.
Well it’s the same board from MD who after the merger took lead in the early 2000s.
To be fair, clean-sheet designs are few and far between. The A350 first flew in 2013. The 777X has an all-new composite wing, so it might not be so technically impoverished as MD was.
The last clean sheet design for Airbus was the A350. It was initially announced in 2004 as an upgraded model of the A330 before they switched it a clean sheet design and it first flew in 2013. Clean sheets designs are rare, that’s not a Boeing thing, that’s just an aviation manufacturer thing. It takes many years and lots of resources to get a clean sheet design started and off the ground.
This isn’t just the tale of the DC-10 Twin, but the cautionary tale of a major company’s collapse due to its hesitation & lack of faith
If Douglas had merged with Lockheed it would’ve been a powerhouse.
@@TBone-bz9mpNO
@@TBone-bz9mp hmmm…while Lockheed would undoubtedly have provided plenty more resources, I could imagine the Tristar project still dragging Douglas down
@@volvoolympianforever
Maybe, or perhaps the could convince Lockheed to persue the ‘twin’ as the ‘Bistar’
@@TBone-bz9mp Now that would've been great bisexual representation to call it the Bistar. ;)
Wow the tone and style of commentary reminds me of documentaries I used to watch from the 70s and 80s, lovin' it
Or as they say, MD went on to buy Boeing with Boeings own money. We all see how well that worked out.
Unfortunately, some people outside of the aviation sphere would like to blame particular people for working there instead of rightfully pointing the finger at MD, though I wouldn't say the merger lead to Boeing developing severe cracks. That began when the 737 was involved in accidents involving a design flaw in the rudder which is where the cracks first began to appear, only the merger caused the cracks to develop faster.
Boeing has been garbage for a long time before MD.
@@randomscb-40charger78 The 737 rudder flaw is also a case where the FAA allowed Boeing to get away with something that they shouldn't have - a non-redundant rudder actuation system. That dates back to the 1960s, when the 737-100 first flew. The FAA allowed a design to be certified that neither contained independent rudder panels with indpendent motors (like the 747) or a single panel with multiple redunant motors (many other aircraft).
Exactly!
Interesting.
I can imagine some very talented engineers, now retired, who may have spent their whole careers doing excellent work on projects that never delivered anything due to the money guys never having the vision to say "go". The sadder thing is those money guys probably retired with more in the kitty having done nothing useful.
My brother in law was a design engineer for GM. He related many many projects that they did only to be cancelled by the bean counters. It amazes me what they designed in the 70s that are now coming out and being hailed as ground breaking new tech.
True, that is me. However, making judgement calls, in real-time, in the moment, in a changing market, is also tough. Hindsight is easy. That said, I can look back and say "They should have listened to me and made billions." I can also say, there are times when I called it wrong. Crystal balls are hard.
@@terryboyer1342this reminds of the GM Iron Duke engine. It was a straight four engine that was notorious for having a very crude design (iron block, iron cylinder head) even by the late 1970s to early 1980s standards in which it was designed in. One of its most notable features was that unlike a usual straight four, it did not have a balance shaft to counter engine vibrations.
During the design process upper management wanted to get rid of the balance shaft for cost reasons, taking inspiration from an engine GM had made for some of their South American market cars in the 1950s that did not have a balance shaft. For that engine, vibrations were countered by stiffening everything else in and around the engine. But for the Iron Duke, this engineering principle was ignored as that would have been costly to the point of neglecting the financial gains of not having a balance shaft.
As a result the Iron Duke’s crude, deliberately uncomplicated design and terribad power would cause it to gain a reputation for ruining the performance of any car it was installed in despite its very good reliability, not helped by it being frequently used as the engine for base model Chevrolets. This explains why retrospective articles frequently consider the iron Duke-equipped third generation Chevrolet Camaro as among the worst sports cars of all time yet they give iron Duke equipped normal Chevrolet cars a pass. It wasn’t until near the end of its production span was the iron Duke finally given a balance shaft but then it ruined many of the reputation of the cars it came in.
@@terryboyer1342 L1011 had dimmable windows prototype in the 70s for instance
@@visionist7 Holy crap, didn't even know that. All the more reason it's a shame it failed despite being by far the better aircraft of the two
McDonnell and Douglas were so different, that a combination of companies was never going to be successful.
Similar stories exist for the merger of Packard and Studebaker. Geographical dislocation being the most obvious.
The debacle of trying to combine the competing personalities of Austin and Morris preceded the larger disaster of British Leyland.
It should have served as a warning. But 'trying times' it seems, led to worse and worse decisions.
Thankyou. Ruairidh. Your documentaries are on point, well researched, and i thoroughly enjoy the pace and tone of your narration.
Thank you very kindly! 😁
or in more modern times Daimler Benz and Chrysler
You’re definitely right that the companies just weren’t compatible. On paper it should’ve work with Douglas being a powerhouse in the commercial sector, and McDonnell being a major defense contractor, their combined force should’ve dominated the whole industry. However, the reality was it was just like you said they were too different a company for it to work.
@@YYZ-SRQ Or on the ground, when Daimler Benz bought a handful of recently privatised railway manufacturers in the UK, around the same time as buying parts of Ericsson and ABB, trading as Adtranz. They eventually flogged it to Bombardier, which eventually sold it off to Alstom. No shortage of internal cultural differences then, a fair bit of which I experienced as an employee.
The New York Central and Pennsylvania Railroads merger into Penn Central is another example of this.
Look at that KLM DC10! 😍
I once was a passenger on a MD11 from Martinair. Very nice flying aircraft.
And i can often see the KC10 Extender of the Dutch airforce arriving and departing.
I really like that 3 engine concept.
Look at that SAS DC10!
Once again... defeat snatched from the jaws of almost certain victory. Oh what could have been.
Fascinating as always, thank you.
I feel that if McDonnell Douglas developed a twin engined DC-10/MD-11, they would have had a better chance at the long haul market than they actually did, and maybe even have a somewhat good competitor against the 767, 777, and A330. Maybe McDonnell Douglas would still exist if that happened.
Well they wanted to stand up and do something different. That's why they created the 3 engine DC10s and MD11s. But those turned out to be flying coffins. Kind of like the 737 MAX today.
@@vintagetriplex3728 There was only one crash due to the design of the plane, all the rest have been external factors. There have been at least 2 747 crashes directly related to design flaws and you don’t hear people calling the 747 a flying coffin. Between entry into service and 1979, there were exactly 5 fatalities on DC-10s outside of THY981. 1979 was a bad year for the DC-10, but it was wholly unrelated to the design of the aircraft itself. You had one bad maintenance error, and then two instances of pilot error
The DC-10 has been a very reliable and safe aircraft over it's decades of service. It wasn't perfect, no clean sheet aircraft design is perfect, but the media machine, and MCD's response to it's early record has lasted many generations.
The DC-10 has 60.5% survival rate on all occupants in fatal accidents, and it has a better fatal accident record per 100,000 flight hours than other wide body jets (747 and A310) with 33 hull-losses; 29 being accidents (excluding criminal occurrences). Nobody claims the "queen of the sky" 747 is a death trap right? No catchy "DC / Death Cruiser" media titles for the A310. It's all relative, aviation is risky, the DC-10 had design faults, that were corrected early on despite MCD's objection and their politics trying to avoid airworthiness directives, and grounding the -10. When operated and maintained properly the -10 has flown on as a reliable machine.
You really can't fault an airplane for failing when maintenance isn't performed to factory specifications or when an operator fails to comply with an airworthiness directive on the aircraft.
Out of accidents resulting in 50 or more fatalities:
51 - 737
32 - 727
27 - 707
24 - TU-154
15 - 747
9 - DC10
@@vintagetriplex3728 When you want to build a certain-weight airliner and the available engines have a certain rated thrust, that's going to determine the number of engines. It's not about being different. Ask Lockheed with their look-alike L-1011... which of course also had three engines because that's how many you needed to do what it/they were designed to do.
As for flying coffins, the DC-10 ended up with a better safety record than the 747-100, and it never blew up in mid-air like the 747 did. The 737MAX has had a relatively high fatality rate early on, but at roughly one fatal accident per million flights hardly a coffin.
@@vintagetriplex3728 - No, they were responding to what the international market wanted, a wide-body that wasn't as hard to fill as a 747 and was cheaper to operate. This was before ETOPS changed the game and opened the door for the A330 and B767 twins. Had MD built the twin they had a good shot at owning this market
It is not surprising that the executive from McDonnell was against the twin, McDonnell was a military contractor and they really didn't understand the large aircraft commercial market the way that the people from Douglas did. Whatever their issues, Douglas had gauged the short range market perfectly with the DC-9. Most people don''t know that, initially, the 737 wasn't a success. It took years for it to build market share.
Entirely possible. A twinjet MD-11 would have come to market years before the 777 or A330, have advanced avionics, the range to fly long haul routes and the ETOPS capability to outperform the quad jets.
Ruairidh, I really appreciate that your comments about pivotal issues range all the way from finer technical details to commercial, cultural, political and legal environment, via management structure and personality issues. It creates a very rounded picture of what actually happened and why.
The McDonnel Douglas management eventually emerged to run Boeing gutting that company just as they did before, prioritizing profit over engineering. The 737 should have been replaced long ago, but the MD strategy of elongating older models and keeping the wings still prevails.
Why though? 90%+ of the improvements of existing airplane models comes from better engines so that’s what Boeing kept doing. The 737 was very popular and its major operators preferred a re-engine over a clean sheet design. Where they failed is with the execution of the re-engine project. Think about it, if the MAX program had been done correctly and there were no issues, the model would be just as successful as its predecessor, the NG model.
@@FlyByWire1 Boeing is putting a much larger fuselage on the same wings requiring a much faster takeoff and landing speeds because the wings were designed for a smaller plane. The MAX puts huge engines on a plane too small for those engines. The engines are placed so far forward that the engines destabilizes the plane when they are revved up requiring a MCAS system which was directly responsible for the complete loss of 2 planes and close to ruin for the company.
@@lymancopps5957 but that’s not true at all. With every single 737 model, the wing area AND engine thrust has increased to match the heavier weight. Do you know how aerodynamics work at all? The MCAS issue was really a result of Boeing not notifying and training pilots of its use and also relying on too few sensors on the nose. Every single plane in the sky today has software that regulate the plane’s angle of attack. Even Airbus ones. You think the wing area and wingspan of the original 737 is the same as today? It’s factually false and you could EASILY fact check that on google lol. Also, takeoff and landing speeds are dependent on the weight, not the size of the wing. A MAX and Neo have very similar takeoff and landing speeds bc they have very similar weight parameters.
@@FlyByWire1 The wings were designed for major generational changes but not redesigned for the elongated fuselages 737-800, 900, MAX 10, .... This is why pilots find themselves pinched between maximum flaps speed and Vat. For your information I took Aerospace engineering in college. How about you?
@@lymancopps5957 I don’t think you took ANY aerospace courses because you keep misunderstanding why it is that the wing area is increased in the first place. It is to support a higher takeoff and operating weight, not necessarily a longer or shorter fuselage. If you had two 737 models and one has a longer fuselage but weighs the same, you wouldn’t need to redesign the wing at all. As the fuselage grew longer on the 737s, so did the takeoff and operating weights and the wings were re-engineered to support that. In addition, the engine thrust was increased to support iron as well. Also, you would never takeoff at full flaps on any 737 and very rarely do you land with full flaps either (the only case is when landing on very short runways). And as I said in my previous posts, the takeoff and landing configurations of the 737 family and the A320 family are VERY similar. If you compare say the 737-800 and the A320Ceo, their total thrusts and MTOW are very similar.
Also amazing how quickly the DC10/MD11 disappeared from passenger routes compared with some other models of the same era.
The DC10 survived for quite a while, right up until 2007, Northwest was flying the DC10. It was used on a lot of international routes. They were buying them cheap on the used market and flogging them hard.
@@bunkie2100 I wonder why they were so cheap? (Rhetorical question...) After Paris, Chicago, Sioux City and Erebus, who wanted to fly on a DC-10. (Note, Erebus was NOT the DC10's fault, Air New Zealand achieved the unusual distinction of the only DC10 crash that wasn't the fault of the airliner. But coming just four months after Sioux City, people could be forgiven for drawing the obvious conclusion. Within two years Air NZ had replaced their near-new DC10's with 747's. I was at a public meeting where Air Nz 'explained' their new choice, some cynical asshole stood up and said "A few years ago you told us the DC10 was the 'perfect fit' for Air NZ. What has changed?" Much mumbling about 'reassessment' and 'changing market demographics', *everybody* knew what happened but no-one was rude enough to laugh.)
It's fascinating how Mc Donnel messed things up for decades and then found itself on the board of Boeing that was doing well. It's always fascinating to see how an alumni of poor decision-makers sunk three companies, GE, Boeing, and McDonel, and still continues to get paid. I must be living in an alternate Universe...
Thanks, I learned a lot more than I ever imagined how bad it got there.
McDonnell Aircraft suffered from too much nepotism at the top. I worked at McDonnell Aircraft (St. Louis fighter planes, early '80's), and the old founder's nephews and kids were being put in critical leadership positions. They weren't that intelligent.
@@softwaresignals Sadly, these problems are industries-wide. How many other industries bring up folks with no expertise? And to think I'm looking for board positions to bring in my portfolio and network only to be dismissed by VC's aggressive takeovers and people placement. Continue this way and see what continues to happen on the merry way to oblivion.
what do you mean GE? GE Aviation is doing fantastic, wtf are you talking about lol
@@FlyByWire1Jack Welch. He had an engineering background and worked his way to the top of GE from the very bottom as a chemical engineer. Yet it was thanks to him that he ushered in an entirely new type of corporate executive that seemed to be concerned with boosting profit and perceived shareholder value over everything else. Selling off unprofitable divisions even if it means sacrificing a large market share. Layoffs. Buying up small and medium sized competitors to reduce rivalry. STOCK BUYBACKS. Not investing back into the company. IGNORING FORWARD PLANNING (not to be confused with “being complacent with forward planning” - that’s 1970s GM and British Leyland).
@@FlyByWire1 WTF? Chill out. Look at the Boeing boardmember and see what alumni they came out. We're talking GE in the 90s, what it used to be and how it's doing right now, which is better than it was in the 90s. "LOL"
I think the big thing killed for the DC-10 Twin was the fact until the middle 1980's, you couldn't have a twin-engined jet airliner that could fly transoceanic routes due to the 60-minute airport diversion requirement in case one engine goes out. As such, McDonnell-Douglas did not have a significant market for the plane, especially when European airlines were already ordering the A300B4 model.
Boeing lucked out because just after a few years after the 767 entered service, the new ETOPS certification for twin-engined jets came into place, and that allowed Boeing to build certified versions of the 767-200ER and 767-300ER so it could fly transatlantic routes, and about the same time the Airbus A310-300 and A300B4-600R getting the same certifications.
Brit here, I REMEMBER VIVIDLY my wife's reaction to seeing DC10 in big letters on the aircraft tailplane we were due to fly out on, she refused to travel! Told the airline person nearest, that she would not fly on that dreadful aircraft. We turned around cancelled our flight and went home. It had a habit of loosing its cargo doors too!! The beginning of Dollar first greed.
The DC-10 also lost engines due to bolts on its engine mount failing.
@@bd5av8r1 due to improper maintenance techniques by AA staff.
A D-C-10 twin would have provided the perfect transition for airlines and pilots once ETOPs was introduced, while allowing others to run mixed twin/tri-jet fleets with much crew training being common to both. Instead, as often happens, brilliant engineering work was killed off by executives who were paid too much and understood too little.
Would have been Airbus' common cockpit before they even existed.
I wonder what Donald Douglas would've said had he lived on beyond 1981. This proves the old saying that "a house divided against itself never wins."
A tragic tale of executive incompetence and mismanagement. It continues today, at Boeing, who imported this cancer via the McD
management merger. It almost compares, in slow motion, to the early 60s Convair/General Dynamics 800/990 airliner program disaster, which resulted in the largest loss by a surviving firm at the time. Innovation always battles bean-counters and stock prices, and frequently, embarrassingly, the golden goose is killed in the name of what's "viable."
Former Boeing personnel have created a very elaborate story about none of it is their fault, how they were engineers at every level of the company and how the MDD merger ruined it. The truth is Boeing's whole cut corners scheme has been going on ever since airline deregulation, where Boeing stock plummeted, cutting costs on safety was the new scheme. Don't think people forgot about Boeing's lies to the NTSB regarding the rudder hardover incidents in the 1990s.
I mean the issue with the 880 and 990 is that their sole advantage over the 707 and DC-8 being speed meant other characteristics such as size, range, and fuel efficiency were sacrificed. The 880s range was so bad that operating the jet at its top cruising speed on US transcontinental routes meant you'd have to make a stopover, eliminating any advantage over a slightly slower but better range 707 or DC-8.
@@randomscb-40charger78 And the sound barrier meant that its speed advantage was distinctly limited. For any significant advantage you had to go supersonic, like Concorde, and that's a huge jump with its own limitations. And it's why modern jetliners are no faster than the 707 (within a few hundredths of a Mach number).
excellent documentary as always
We're gonna build a twin jet. Yes siree. Uh hu, just you wait. Any day now. Here's a picture. Seriously, gonna start soon. Yep, gonna be a great plane. Callin' it the DC 1011 200/300/XX . Gonna be beautiful. Doin' a deal with them youropeans. Wait for it. Happnin soon....
And Boeing bought MD???? No wonder it's now in a hole and still digging!
Good summary! I went to work out of college on the MD-11 avionics (flight control systems) in 1986 at launch, and at that time, as a young Aerospace/Software/Systems/Autopilot engineer, I did WONDER HOW a tri-jet could succeed in the new age of ETOPS ! It burned too much fuel, and there was an extra 3rd engine to increase maintenance costs. Yet I assumed the executives were smart (wrong!!!). Man, a twin-engined MD-11, with new wings, would have been profitable. Hindsight, sure. Thinking now how many twin-engine MD-11's we could have seen utilized by UPS/Fedex/DHL, as well as passenger duty all over the place. It could have been a great freighter (like the tri-jet MD-11 is) AND a great passenger plane too. The glass cockpit avionics was a good thing, and adding a HUD at some point would have helped.
The MD11s avionics were way better than anything boeing ever had at the time.
The aircraft that could’ve made McDonnell Douglas a major contender.
Its nice to See a Video about this Topic! Did my own Research on it and its interessting
That is the best aviation video I have ever watched on TH-cam! Cheers mate! Look forward to more! Loved the MD11 design and would have been great seeing a MD11 twin
Its just nice to see someone that does research in an more unknown history of aviation. Not many are interessted in that aera of aviation or that type of aircrafts since we saddly dont see them very often anymore. But keep up your work i really enjoy it and its right my ally of aviation content
Spectacular documentary, thanks, I love aviation development insights
i love saturday mornings when RM posts a trains or planes video 🤩
De Gaulle resented everyone 🤣
My first thought too.
Yet, France is still the only European country making successful jets fighters while everybody is buying F35s ...
No wonder The Jackal tried to kill him
I wasn't aware there was such a proposal from McDonnell Douglas in the works, but yes, Airbus Industrie did shake things up quite a bit in the commercial airliner business in the mid-late 1970s.
Excellent documentary. Most interesting was the failings of the McDonnell management team that failed to understand that the necessity to rescue the Douglas commercial aircraft R&D team from its own overly conservative decision making. And the first demonstration that mergers intended to rescue a failing company from bankruptcy. A fate soon to be experienced by the merged company that resulted in the merger with Boeing.
Huh. I had no idea this idea existed at all, thank you for the education.
It probably meant that MDD would have had more footing in the airline industry if they got that DC-10 twin out before the 767.
Fantastic video and informative as always 😊 a job well done
Love the DC-10.Shame the twin did'nt come to fruition.Douglas airliners are a favourite of mine.
Great piece, expertly done,and very informative!
Thank you for making this video!
Always love another Rory aviation video
With more proposed models than a kids logo set, no wonder both it's customers and engineers were confused. Unable to concentrate on core models and what customers actually wanted no wonder the company collapsed so quickly.
I seem to recall Lockheed proposed the same thing with their Tristar L1011 and I guess failed for the same reasons..
Great work, a fascinating watch.
When a company said it will have 89% commonality, you can sort of calculate that it will end up being 8,9% at absolute best.
Fascinating and well done. (Had no idea MD dithered over a WB twin).
The Canadian Airlines footage was wonderfully nostalgic.
Who ever designed that latch mechanism on the DC-1O cargo door started a domino falling sequence that hasn't stopped yet.
Built by Convair…. the weaknesses were hushed up….
Nice to see the film of Canadian Airlines DC-10's. Interesting that we bought an ex Pakistan International DC10. It had to be fumigated and parked for 24hrs. When it was opened up the pax cabin and cargo holds were literally full of cockroaches!
Such a shame… there was also a previously discussed “twin 8” twin engine DC-8 derivative before the DC-9.
Had MDC decided in favor of developing both the twin 8 and twin 10, they’d probably still be a viable independent company… MDC was specifically targeted by the European govts.
There was also a proposal for the Twin 8, a DC-8 with twin engines (CFM56) that would have been the Boeing 757 but many years earlier. My cousin flew a DC-8-72 that had four CFM56 engines, and said at cruise the two outboard engines were at idle power.
"No money" killed it like everything else including the Twin-10, Douglas Aircraft was broke and couldn't pull out of its dive. Not even the McDonnell merger could save it. I worked there from 1983--2012, now retired.
No to nitpick, Glenn, but I had three years as flight engineer on the DC-8-73, and we never had the outboards at idle in cruise. It took all four to keep that heavy old bird at cruise speed, and we had to be on planned Mach cruise number especially on the NAT tracks.
@@markburckhard553 I'm reporting what my cousin said. He has over 3,000 hours in freighter DC-8's. Many of those hours were long overwater flights across the Pacific.
Now he flies 737's, says it's a lousy aircraft to fly.
Another excellent documentary. I knew that both DAC and Boeing were trying to make an alliance with the newly created Airbus, the biggest risk being the production of the Boeing 757 with the Rolls-Royce engines at Filton if the UK abandoned Airbus. The A300 was a very shaky time for the French and much public money being poured in to keep it alive. Yes, the prudent DAC bean counters and shareholders missed a big trick with not launching a twin and trijet together, but production of Aircraft is a very expensive thing, with a much larger set of key skill capability groups required, much larger in number volume than a few designers. These skill groups have become very scarce with the demise and reductions in apprenticeships in the 1980s. I heard that DAC did not have enough people to put into production 2 big separate airliners. Airbus did at source design have 2 airliner versions to go into production together, the A330 and the A340, but soon dropped the A340. The last DAC design initiatives were just to get a buyer, with Airbus being favored first, this came very close and would have put Airbus production into the USA much sooner, something Boeing had to defend. Today, we have much in design, but do we have the financial backing and skills to put these ideas into production?
I think Airbus dodged a bullet there. McDD would likely have destroyed Airbus from the inside the way they (nearly) destroyed Boeing.
Airbus didn't drop the A340, the first A340 flew a year before the first A330. October 1991 / November 1992.
With the engines available today, a DC-10 with twin engines would have been very successful!
The MD-11 should have been a twin engine plane. It would probably still be in production today.
Let's just say the end for MD would have been much swifter had the arguably better Lockheed L-1011 not been delayed. Because Lockheed lost a couple of years and momentum in orders MD was able to limp along a while longer. Lockheed had the good sense to see it was time to get out since their last successful commercial airliner was the piston engine Connie and it was clear that the L-1011 was never going to make a profit despite it being a fantastic jet with many advantages over the DC-10.
Hindsight always being 20/20 I would say either or both Lockheed and MD would have been better served if they had focused on a 150 seat + single isle aircraft that was engineered with growth potential into >220 seat stretches. The sweet spot and real money makers for manufacturers are in the spaces between a regional jet and wide bodies since that is where the most sales volume is so such a jet by one or both would have been the only good way to compete with each other with sufficient order volume to allow all of them to be profitable where the airlines would favor a specific manufacturer based on their fleet commonalities, specifications for range, efficiency, capacity, and other minor tangible differences that would affect the right choice for a given airline or routes.
The huge wide bodies simply have too little sales volume to realistically recover development and certification expenses when dividing those costs by number of units produced while maintaining a competitive unit cost. Those wide bodies are almost loss leaders even once those costs have been recovered when compared to the smaller jets in the 150-250 seat size range. That strategy would have given them the resources to ratchet into that >250 twin they desired but if Boeing, MD, Lockheed, and Airbus were all playing in that space its nearly certain at least one of those companies would have been swallowed up with financial losses on their project due to too many companies and designs without enough demand for all of them.
1:56 look at that beauty 😍
Everyone seems to be assuming that the premise of this (well-researched, BTW) video is correct: That if MDC had built something to fit in-between the DC-9 and the DC-10, then they might have remained a viable airframe maker -- perhaps thriving to this day. A more likely scenario IMO is that the few billion (at least) in development cost wouldn't have been recouped, along with robbing some sales from the DC-10-10.
Instead DAC went the other direction, growing the -10 into the -30. That's where they made their money back on the program, especially since Lockheed was much later with the -500 and it didn't compete very well anyway. Because it couldn't add a center main landing gear, weight growth was severely limited and to get comparable range they had to resort to chopping down the fuselage (an ouchie for seat-mile costs) and jacking up the tire pressures to as high as airports would allow (wears out the pavement faster).
The obvious rejoinder is "So how did that work out for them?", and my answer (guess) is "About the same one way or the other".
Great video.
Great vid 😄
15:23. Yea the executives suffered alright. Probably had to wait another year or two for that Martha’s Vineyard mansion
MDD should have just focused on military aircraft when their civil aviation began struggling. James McDonnell was the biggest obstruction in the firm. He basically refused to do anything but build already successful aircraft models and refused the need to develop aircraft for an obviously changing market.
I always wondered why McDonnell Douglas never made a DC-10 twin, I even made a plastic model of it by shortening the front fuselage and a conventional tail.
The 1971 spec DC-10 Twin sounds more like a 777 than a 767 or A300 competitor. Had it been launched at that timeframe, Airbus would have had to fight vigilantly for market share and the 747 may have not seen another generation. Basically, large twinjets like the A350 and 777 would have existed far earlier if MDC took that leap of faith in 1971. Sadly, the effects of the McDonnell top management are still seen to date with the current situation at Boeing.
It should have been called DC11...
“KSSU” - perfect 🎸
That term still exists in airline catering
theres a music video from the dutch duo Ad en Karin called In Een DC-10 filmed in the cockpit of a Martinair Holland DC-10
The DC-10 had an impressive safty record, but it couldn't take a hit. I'm mishapped that would send any other aircraft limping back to the airport, sent the DC-10 into the ground.
MCD was also co producing the F/A-18 Hornet and AV-8B Harrier.
Minor thing, but the video footage accompanying the dc10 launch had sequences of the later series (middle leg)..great vid tho, as was the ldv
Can you release these videos in podcast form?
Strange tale. Just proves you have to project confidence and certainty to succeed. The DC10 tri-jet was supposed to have been very popular with passengers though due to its luxury and speed. Crazy really. Some companies are or were just a mess. Saying that the DC9/MD80 was an incredible success for the company. Good video but I sometimes feel you tend to focus on the negative too much. People always seem play up the failures too much.
Flew from New Zealand to Los Angeles via Hawaii on a NZ DC10, (1981). Excellent aeroplane.
@@richardthomasmillican3980 Same here on TE Air New Zealand International on board DC10-30 SYD-AKL-HNL-LAX December 1980 outgoing, returning February 1981 same route. TE Air New Zealand DC 10-30 was marketed as the "Big-10". Great aircraft and airline at the time. Cockpit visits mid flight middle of the Pacific middle of the night and the stars in the sky so bright trans Pacific flight.
Great memories and the DC 10 now gone.
Miss it thanks.
Ansett 727.
Great news doesn't sell newspapers...
I was employed through that time of incompetent management at MDC & Boeing. Absolute fools!
Serving that middle engine located high up in the tail would have presented challenges I suppose.
Engines Turning Or Passengers Swimming is one of my favorite aviation jokes.
Ha ha NAH
yeaaa a new videoooo
I wasn't aware that Airbus was/is a French company... I was always told it was a multinational company with no 'country of origin'... Live and learn I guess...
Just like Renault...
The roots of Airbus are French (Sud Aviation). But it is definitely a multinational effort.
A DC-10 twin ? Yeah. Look carefully, it's called the 767. Take the engine out of the tail and it looks very similar to the DC-10. Just wish Boeing hadn't merged with McDonnell Douglas. 😮
Well, that's pretty sad.
Why did a problem with a cargo door call into question the viability of the tri-jet concept. I don’t see the connection.
I agree there. The cargo door saga called into question the trustworthiness of McDD as an aircraft maker, and the DC10 specifically. But nothing at all to do with the L1011, B727 or the HS Trident.
With hindsight M-D should have made the original idea work in the 70s even if the French didn’t get onboard….. all British-European projects of the time were very niche to specific airline routes and markets…. it was very difficult to align for example British Mediterranean and Middle East requirements with French internal and North African needs. Hence very small production runs and many model variants. Even the A330 started off very short range in the 90s.
By contrast when Douglas copied the BAC-111 into the bigger DC-9 and Boeing copied the 727 from the HS Trident they were incredibly successful. Airbus only got things finally moving with the A300 with some imaginative lease deals to Eastern Airlines in the US.
I think that tail mounted engine should have been the spare.
They didn't need to build a twin engine DC 10 or MD 11 when they got together with Boeing the 777 was the right size for that job but it would have been nice if some right size engines came along at that time to see if the L1011 could have done it
"Mmmm Imma make a twin-engine plane"
...
"New planes are hard to make, let me find someone to work with"
...
"Nah I'll just make it myself"
...
"We don't need one anyway, we have the DC-10"
...
*Competitors making actual progress*
...
"Mmmm Imma make a twin-engine plane fr this time"
Rinse and repeat
It took Europe longer to build aircraft and spacecraft because, if one country backed out of the project, they would be missing a wing, an engine, or some other component, and it stalled the whole endeavor. Now, even American projects rely on components made by numerous countries.
To think that if MD were ballsy enough to go through with the Twin, Airbus might not be where it is today 😶
I often wondered why that third engine on the DC-10 wasn’t lopped off, and a nice twin developed from the airplane. That enormous engine stuck in the vertical fin of the DC-10 always seemed out of place to my eye. As we would later find out, that third engine was unnecessary.
ETOPS.
It's crazy how back in these days you could already see the traits of the McDonnell side that would come to destroy Boeing today.
They collapsed because they didnt understand the civil market. They then proved that at Boeing.
Tell me if this or was not like an off-brand Boeing 767-200 plane.
Boeing making many of the same mistakes today. Under-investing in the 787-10 by not designing a new wing that would give the aircraft competitive range. And over-engineering the 737 Max, a platform that was always going to be too small to compete with long-range Airbus single-aisle jets. History never repeats, but it rhymes.
The 787-10 is supposed to be a replacement for older 777-200ERs. It’s not meant to be a high capacity high range aircraft like the 777X series or Airbus A350.
You are right that they could have designed a 787-10ER with a bigger wing and more optimisations. But from a market standpoint it’s not enough to warrant that type of airplane and it a 787-10ER would probably eat some sales of the 777X series
Yes! Thats the real issue here: making the 787-10 more efficient and longer range will cut sales of your 777-X. One needs to watch hamstrining your flagship (777-X) by making a lower line (787) cut into its sales.
787-10 is a nice high capacity 8-12hr endurance aircraft. Perfect for the australiasian market. Fits snugly between the A350-900 and 1000 models without the extra expense of the range.
✈👍
One name can be pinned for the collapse of MD, Harry Stonecipher.
No my dude. He was brought in by the MD board to make the merger (or takeover) happen.
So Douglas wasn't the problem, Mcdonnel is right? Meaning that a merge between Boeing and Douglas would turn out great.
Boeing + Douglas could have been okay. Adding McDonnell into the mix was toxic.
@@cr10001The CEO of Lockheed at the time the L-1011 was launched said in an interview that one of his biggest mistakes was not buying Douglas when they had to seek a merger. If Douglas had merged with Lockheed rather than McDonnell there would've been no DC-10 v L-1011 competition.
The DC-10 had only one crash directly related to a "design flaw." There was a flaw with the bulk cargo door where it was possible to force the locking handle down without it properly engaging the locking hooks, which caused the AA96 incident, and then there was a bulletin issued however Turkish Airlines didn’t remedy the problem, leading to the Turkish 981 crash. Turkish takes some of the blame filing down the locking pins on the cargo door to make it easier to close. Considerably reducing the force required to bend the handle mechanism.
There were also a few system flaws that were claimed to cause AA191 though I am still of the opinion that those guys were basically screwed if they still followed common practices of the time for an engine out procedure.
If I remember correctly, there was a gentleman's agreement between MDD and the FAA rather than the FAA acting like the regulator it was supposed to be, and the redesign of the cargo door was not properly done or tested, which is the root of why the Turkish airlines crash happened. And the only reason the first explosive cargo door accident wasn't a fatal crash was because the pilot had previously assessed there was a risk of a single point of failure in the hydraulic lines and asked for more practice times in the simulator to handle such an eventuality - which came to pass.
Rubbish. This was a totally unairworthy shitbox that violated every precept of fail-safe design. An inherently unsafe cargo door design that collapsed the floor because there were no pressure relief vents to prevent all the control cables from being severed. Flight control surfaces that retracted due to the absence of hydraulic fluid because there were no check valves to prevent fluid loss. Uncontained engine failures taking out all independent hydraulic systems simultaneously because their layout was susceptible to being severed by shrapnel
@@djpalindrome Considering a similar incident happened to the Tristar almost a decade earlier and because they had put in a 4th hydraulic system that didn’t intersect the #2, they were able to limp to a successful landing on that one hydraulic system. You could argue that the hydraulic systems configuration in the DC-10 that allowed Flight 232 to happen was also a design flaw, but I feel that’d be a bit unfair because most planes at the time (including the 747) worked that same way.
@@djpalindrome The DC-10 has been a very reliable and safe aircraft over it's decades of service. It wasn't perfect, no clean sheet aircraft design is perfect, but the media machine, and MCD's response to it's early record has lasted many generations.
The DC-10 has 60.5% survival rate on all occupants in fatal accidents, and it has a better fatal accident record per 100,000 flight hours than other wide body jets (747 and A310) with 33 hull-losses; 29 being accidents (excluding criminal occurrences). Nobody claims the "queen of the sky" 747 is a death trap right? No catchy "DC / Death Cruiser" media titles for the A310. It's all relative, aviation is risky, the DC-10 had design faults, that were corrected early on despite MCD's objection and their politics trying to avoid airworthiness directives, and grounding the -10. When operated and maintained properly the -10 has flown on as a reliable machine.
You really can't fault an airplane for failing when maintenance isn't performed to factory specifications or when an operator fails to comply with an airworthiness directive on the aircraft.
The aircraft that was involved in the Turkish Airlines crash was built after the report on AA96 had been released. That's fully on McDonnell Douglas.
I blame Xenu.
Blud be lookin like a A310💀
McDonnell got what it wanted with the 2 airplanes 1 type certificate concept. It resulted in in the 737 MAX. And that is leading to the ruining of Boeing.
That’s not uncommon though. The 777 and 767 have the same cert and so do the A300 and A310. There’s nothing wrong with that at all. It makes the process smoother for operators to integrate the model into their fleets and it keeps costs low.
Southwest and American are just as culpable as Boeing is in the MAX. Boeing offered a new proposed 737 replacement, but SW and AA said "we want a modern 737 instead."
A Boeing/Lockheed merger next ?
Inevitably
Hindsight being 20/20, the DC-10 twin could've been the aircraft to put McDonnell Douglas back on the map.
The senior management of the McDonnell side of MD really dropped the ball with this one. Jackson McGowan could see the potential, but John McDonnell couldn't. Its just sad, but also typical that the money side of MDC held the engineering side back and pretty much doomed the corporation to mediocrity.
Edit: Imagine fucking up so bad, that your three engined aircraft consumes MORE fuel than its quad engined rival... 😅
The presenter's opinion that the 60 minute rule was and is obsolete, is in my opinion badly flawed.
The DC-10 trijet offers a significant safety margin over any twin engine over water
aircraft, and I think that is still true today. ETOPS rules cannot conceal the problem
of a duel engine failure, in mid ocean flight. Given a choice even today, between
flying from New York to Europe, or Los Angeles to Tokyo, on a 777 or a DC-10,
I would opt for the DC 10, with its three engine configuration. Likewise, I regard the 4 engine
747 as an inherently safer aircraft than any twin engine aircraft, particularly in over
water flight, far from land. ETOPS rules are, in my opinion, a risky proposition for 2 engine over water flight.
Well single aisle ops is the norm now over the atlantic. They are all twins. Just wait until Ryanair starts service to NY.
I agree, twin engines aren't terribly reassuring over the Pacific (though statistically they're fine). I'd opt for a 747, or preferably an A340 or A380. :) Or a L1011, if any were still flying. Not a DC-10!
The dc-10 twin with the old wing would be a junk plane, the a300 had a supercritical wing
Funny how failure to adopt a supercritical wing lead to naught, for aircraft all cruise a hundred knots slower now. An ordinary NACA laminar-flow wing would have sufficed. Still, Douglas should have still been smarting from its DC-8 wing fiasco, and been more receptive to new designs.
Sounds exactly what is happening to Boeing right now.
The DC-10 always felt shoddy to me as a flyer. MD-11 was much nicer.