McDonnell Douglas - DC-10
The DC-10 was primarily designed to meet a requirement for American Airlines, which specified a twin aisle wide body aircraft capable of US transcontinental operations with a full payload and capable of block times over these routes comparable with the Boeing 747. The 747 was also the benchmark for the aircrafts operating economics. Another requirement was that the aircraft have approach speeds lower than the Boeing 727-100, and the ability to operate from New York’s La Guardia airport. American had originally specified that this requirement should be met with a twin engine design, but the constraints of the available engine technology of the time resulted in a three engine design. In February 1968 American Airlines placed an order for 25 with options and the program was launched in April of that year when United Airlines placed an order for 30 with options. Several variants of the DC-10 were produced which all share common fuselage dimensions and are powered by General Electric CF6-50 series engines, with the exception of the DC-10-40 variant.
The initial version, the DC-10-10, was the US domestic version designed to meet the American Airlines requirement, a total of 131 being built of which 9 were DC-10-10CF convertible passenger/freighter aircraft. This was followed by the DC-10-15 of which 7 were built, and was essentially a DC-10-10 with higher thrust engines for Aeromexico and Mexicana, who had specific take off performance requirements. A heavier intercontinental version, the DC-10-30, was offered in passenger (-30) convertible passenger/freight (-30CF) and freight versions (30F), and was ordered by a number of international carriers including Lufthansa, KLM, and Swissair. A total of 206 DC10-30s were built comprising 169 passenger, 25 convertibles and 12 freighters. The DC-10-30CF version in addition served as the basis for the KC-10 tanker/freighter version for the USAF and this was the final production version of the DC-10 with 60 being produced. To meet the requirements of Northwest and Japan Air Lines the DC-10-40 was built, a P&W JT9D powered aircraft which was apart from the engines essentially a DC-10-30. Total DC-10 production was 446 aircraft of which 386 were commercial aircraft and production ended in April 1990 with the last KC-10, production of commercial variants having ended in 1989. Post production variants include the DC-10-10F which is a freighter conversion of the DC-10-10, the MD-10 which modifies the flight deck to a 2 crew configuration using avionics and systems similar to the MD-11, and the KDC-10-30 which is a commercial DC-10-30CF modified to a configuration similar to the KC-10 for the RNAF. In addition several DC-10-40 passenger aircraft have been converted to DC10-40F freighters.
In February 2006, 106 commercial DC-10s remained active and the lead aircraft was a Northwest Airlines DC-10-30 which had accumulated 128,677 flying hours and 29,179 cycles.
