Welcome to Unsuccessful Sunday, the stories of the unsuccessful side of aviation. This week is going to be about the Lockheed L1011 Tristar.
It started when in the 1960's American Airlines wanted an efficient wide-body aircraft. Originally he wanted a twin-engined aircraft mainly to be used for Trans-Atlantic flights but doing so was banned by the FAA unless they flew within an hour of an airport, which isn't efficient nor is it fast, now they could have used the new Boeing 747 but that had four engines, thus meaning it was less-efficient, so they came up with a simple compromise and made 3 engined 'tri-jets'. But they still needed some company, preferably an American company, to do that, so they told Douglas, Boeing, and Lockheed that the company with the best and most efficient aircraft would be picked to enter the fleet. Lockheed and Douglas were interested despite Douglas' merger with McDonnell and Lockheed being a military aircraft manufacturer, meanwhile, Boeing was too busy 'raking in money from the 747 program' ad they didn't have anything to do with it, so that left 2 companies. Lockheed had an advantage, having made many military aircraft they had lots of technology to potentially bring to the civilian market, and so they did, with lots of technology the L1011 could land itself, which was seemingly new and impressive back then and there was no other civilian aircraft quite like it. Ask any pilot who flew the 1011 and they would tell you it had great handling. Ask any passenger and they would tell you it was spacious, quiet and modern. But that didn't come without some hurdles, see, the design with the 's' duct needed special engines and neither General Electric or Pratt and Whitney had the correct size engine so they needed Rolls Royce engines but they RR failed to keep up with demand and then were forced to declare bankruptcy and momentarily close, blaming it on Lockheed, but this meant an almost end to the 1011 program and by this time Mc Donnel-Douglas had built the DC-10/MD-10 but an agreement was made with the British Government that they would give loans to Lockheed, meaning that Lockheed could buy RR engines, ultimately keeping them [RR] in business but despite this American still chose the DC-10 and wthout those orders Lockheed could not break-even which cost Lockheed billions and almost put them into bankrupcy as well, so, you could say that American Airlines but Lockheed near bankrupcy, but it's alright because DC-10 was faulty and had problems and faults so...Your loss American. But then the DC-10 was also, well, sort of a failure, having 2 widebody tri-jets in the market hurt each-overs sales and then came the Airbus A300 twin-jet and they both didn't really have a use.
Well, I hope you learned something, make sure to come back next week! Later! Thank you!
It started when in the 1960's American Airlines wanted an efficient wide-body aircraft. Originally he wanted a twin-engined aircraft mainly to be used for Trans-Atlantic flights but doing so was banned by the FAA unless they flew within an hour of an airport, which isn't efficient nor is it fast, now they could have used the new Boeing 747 but that had four engines, thus meaning it was less-efficient, so they came up with a simple compromise and made 3 engined 'tri-jets'. But they still needed some company, preferably an American company, to do that, so they told Douglas, Boeing, and Lockheed that the company with the best and most efficient aircraft would be picked to enter the fleet. Lockheed and Douglas were interested despite Douglas' merger with McDonnell and Lockheed being a military aircraft manufacturer, meanwhile, Boeing was too busy 'raking in money from the 747 program' ad they didn't have anything to do with it, so that left 2 companies. Lockheed had an advantage, having made many military aircraft they had lots of technology to potentially bring to the civilian market, and so they did, with lots of technology the L1011 could land itself, which was seemingly new and impressive back then and there was no other civilian aircraft quite like it. Ask any pilot who flew the 1011 and they would tell you it had great handling. Ask any passenger and they would tell you it was spacious, quiet and modern. But that didn't come without some hurdles, see, the design with the 's' duct needed special engines and neither General Electric or Pratt and Whitney had the correct size engine so they needed Rolls Royce engines but they RR failed to keep up with demand and then were forced to declare bankruptcy and momentarily close, blaming it on Lockheed, but this meant an almost end to the 1011 program and by this time Mc Donnel-Douglas had built the DC-10/MD-10 but an agreement was made with the British Government that they would give loans to Lockheed, meaning that Lockheed could buy RR engines, ultimately keeping them [RR] in business but despite this American still chose the DC-10 and wthout those orders Lockheed could not break-even which cost Lockheed billions and almost put them into bankrupcy as well, so, you could say that American Airlines but Lockheed near bankrupcy, but it's alright because DC-10 was faulty and had problems and faults so...Your loss American. But then the DC-10 was also, well, sort of a failure, having 2 widebody tri-jets in the market hurt each-overs sales and then came the Airbus A300 twin-jet and they both didn't really have a use.
Well, I hope you learned something, make sure to come back next week! Later! Thank you!
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