Word: plane
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...design certificate of the DC-10s in the U.S. The grounding was voluntarily followed by all but one airline outside the U.S. (Venezuela's Viasa, which uses five DC-10s). A total of 41 airlines that normally carry 60,000 passengers a day on the $40 million plane built by the McDonnell Douglas Corp. had suddenly lost key portions of their fleets. The initial result was confusion and tedious delays in airport terminals as travelers scrambled to get seats on other flights and airlines struggled to shift their available aircraft to plug the gaps left by the grounded planes...
Longtime critics of the jet claim it has more basic problems. They charge that the plane does not have as many redundant or fail-safe systems to handle an emergency as other wide-bodied jets. In particular, they cite the hydraulic systems. The DC-10 has three, whereas the Lockheed TriStar has four and the Boeing 747 has five. The DC-10 places its hydraulic lines along the leading-and more exposed-wing edge, rather than in the trailing edge, where the 747's and Tri-Star's are located. Critics also claim the hydraulic lines under...
...subtle kinds of pressure are at work as huge and enormously expensive aircraft development projects go forward. One is from the outside as politicians, mainly Congressmen anxious to bring jobs and business to their districts, gently prod top FAA officials to expedite the process of approving a new plane's design and flight results. Another is what Daugherty calls "peer pressure": company engineers seeking to impress FAA examiners with their expertise in order to nudge a project along a shade faster than might be wise...
Before the accident, the planemaker was looking good. It had more than $750 million in cash and, after its slow start, its ten-year, $1 billion investment in the DC-10 was about to pay off. The company needs 400 sales of the $40 million plane to cover costs and start making profits. It has already delivered 281, received firm orders for 49, and taken options-which buyers could still cancel-for 50. Last year the Douglas commercial-plane side, which McDonnell had acquired in 1967, lost $60.3 million, mainly because of unrecovered DC-10 costs. This was more than...
...Airlines already flying DC-10s will not be deterred from buying more. Reason: switching to alternative models would cause a costly lack of common parts, service and training. Yet the DC-10's troubles could cause new buyers to steer away from the plane and thus delay its break-even. Worse still, in the highly unlikely event of a permanent grounding, McDonnell Douglas would not only be sued by airlines that have paid a total of about $10 billion for DC-10s but would also have to write off the plane's $574 million of unrecovered development costs...