Not Classic Jetliners (8) : Fairchild-Dornier 728

The Fairchild-Dornier 728 was a good design scuppered by a failing company and only 1 was ever built and never flew. Fairchild bought Dornier in 1996 and publicly announced the 728 soon afterwards to supplement the 328JET. It was intended as a family of regional jets with a design similar to the A320 and 737 able to carry between 55 and 100 passengers.



The first prototype was completed at the end of 2001 and rolled out early the next year. By then 8 customers had placed orders for 125 aircraft with options for over 150 more. The plan was to begin delivered in 2003. However in April 2002 Fairchild-Dornier collapsed and filed for insolvency, even before the neat little 728 could take to the air. Major orders were cancelled soon afterwards.

A Chinese company has shown interest in buying the project but its unlikely now the project will ever come to anything. Especially as the only completed 728 has had it's wings cut off so it could be transported to the German aerospace centre DLR. Two other fuselages were also built.

Not Classic Jetliners (7) : Boeing 747SP

The Boeing 747 is of course the iconic Jumbo Jet and the mainstay of the world's long-haul passenger fleets (though to be honest i fly on Airbus A340s to Asia most often these days) and over 1400 have been built to date. However only 45 of these have been the 747SP Special Performance, a heavily modified version for longer range flights.



The 747SP was developed as a shorter-bodied version of the 747-100, this was partly to try and compete in the market with the smaller wide-bodies of the time, the Tristar and DC-10 (and indeed Boeing did explore a 3 engined version of the 747 that looked like someone had cut the tail off a Tristar and stuck it onto the end of a 747) and also for the new market need growing in the late 1970s for ultra-long range routes.

The 747SP looks quite different to a "normal" 747 in having a fuselage around 14m shorter to give it a stubby look but also a taller tail fin (the shorter fuselage caused increased yaw movement) and simpler flaps. The 747SP can carry around 300 passengers in a mixed class layout and has a typical range of 6650nm compared to 5300nm for a fully loaded standard 747-100 (it was the longest range airliner available until the arrival of the 747-400 in the late 1980s). The SP is also faster being able to cruise at Mach 0.88 compared to Mach 0.82 for a -100.



However despite the "special performance" only 45 SPs were built due to the increased oil price in the 1970s and reduced capacity of the type compared to normal 747s. Less than 20 are still in service, many serving as VIP aircraft with Middle Eastern governments.

Not Classic Jetliners (6) : Shanghai Y-10

The Y-10 was the first attempt by China to produce it's own jet airliner and until the ARJ21 takes off later this year the only attempt. The Y-10 was developed by the Shanghai Aviation Industrial Company in the 1970s as a four engined passenger transport to free China from dependence on foreign suppliers. The Y-10 looks very much like a Boeing 707, which China did have a small number of at the time, though it has been denied that it was an example of reverse engineering.



The programme was also started to give the Chinese aviation industry experience with large jet powered transports and for national pride. Politics in fact were heavily tied up in the project which was spearheaded by Wang Hongwen. As he, and the Mao era, fell out of favour so did enthusiasm for the Y-10 which was increasingly seen as a throwback to the days of isolationism.



In 1980 the Y-10 made it's first flight but the only flyable Y-10 (another airframe was used for static testing) made 130 flights before being retired in 1983. The project was cancelled for cost and technical reasons though politics is likely to have been the main reason. No high-up party officials attended the Y-10's maiden flight because it was tainted with Wang Hongwen. Instead China began to licence produce the McDonnell Douglas MD-80.



As the 707 is my favourite jet airliner of all its a shame the Y-10 never took off (so to speak). There was some development work on a possible AWACS version however in the end China used the Il-76.

Not Classic Jetliners (5) : Dassault Mercure 100

This series is about jet airliners which failed, either technically or in most cases commercially. With only 12 examples built and 11 sold the French Dassault Mercure 100 was probably the least successful jet airliner of all time. Work began on the Mercure in the late 1960s to produce a competitor to the Boeing 737. The design was similar to the 737 though at 140 passengers capacity was a larger aircraft (the 737-200 being able to carry less than 120).



The Mercure was the first French jet airliner since the successful Caravelle and was designed using Dassault's experience with jet fighters like the Mirage so that it had good high-speed characteristics, indeed was faster than the 737, and had good low-speed lift with it's advanced (for the time) wing. The first Mercure took to the air in 1971.

Unfortunately Dassault could not sell it to anyone, the only order coming from French airline Air Inter. The main reason is thought to have been the poor range of the Mercure compared to it's competitors like the 737 and DC-9. The Mercure was designed for European air routes with a maximum loaded range of 400 miles whereas it's competitors typically had longer range which added to the operational flexibility.

Just 10 production aircraft and 2 prototypes were made, far less than the hundreds originally envisaged. One of the prototypes was later sold to Air Inter. All 11 examples served their airline well, though Air Inter did receive a government subsidy. The Mercure was finally retired in 1995 after 20 years of trouble free service.



Dassault tried to revive the design with versions that had more range, capacity and improved engines but these designs came to naught.

Not Classic Jetliners (4) : Hawker Siddeley Trident

A competitor to the much more successful Boeing 727, the Hawker Siddeley Trident was designed during the 1950s as a short & medium range jet airliner able to carry about 110 passengers. The design, at the time a de Havilland project (the DH 121), was the first airliner with 3 jet engines and the first tri-jet design with the engines all at the rear of the plane, this configuration was was also taken up by the 727 and Russian Tu-154.



The Trident 1, designed to a BEA (British European Airlines) requirement, first flew in early 1962. BEA had insisted on a smaller aircraft than originally envisaged (it could carry 98 passengers) unfortunately other potential customers like American Airlines wanted a bigger aircraft. American Airlines bought the 727 instead which ironically was much closer to the original DH 121 design than the Trident 1. The Trident entered service with BEA in 1964 and was the first civil aircraft fitted with a flight recorder and be equipped for automatic blind landings for use in adverse weather conditions such as fog. In 1966 the Trident was the first airliner to land in fog.

Throughout the 1960s there were continuous improvements to the design including the Trident 1E which was close to the original DH 121 size carrying 140 passengers and the 2E which had further capacity and extra range. The latter achieved a notable sale when 33 were ordered the Chinese national airline CAAC and Chinese air force. One Chinese Trident was lost in mysterious circumstances over Mongolia when Lin Biao was using it to try and defect to the USSR. The official story is that the Trident ran out of fuel. A Trident has also been left marooned at Nicosia International Airport which has been abandoned since 1974 due to the Turkish invasion of northern Cyprus.



The final version, the Trident 3 had a 5m fuselage plug and was able to carry up to 180 passengers. The Trident 3 was actually a 4 engined aircraft as it had a small RB162 turbojet which could be used for take-offs, the Tridents had a reputation for needing plenty of runway to get airborne so the extra boost was especially welcome in the larger Trident 3! The reason for the problems with take-off was that the wing was optimised for high speed (the Trident was one of the fastest subsonic jet airliners) and not lift at low speeds.

Trident development ceased in the early 1970s and small sales continued but total production of the Trident was just 117 when the last example was delivered in 1978. Although technically advanced the Trident was an expensive airliner to operate and had a rival with Boeing's marketing muscle and name behind it. The rival 727 had sales of 1832.



No Tridents are thought to be active today, British Airways who inherited the BEA fleet withdrew them in the 1980s though they remained in service in China until the 1990s. A number of Tridents have been preserved or are in use in various locations for fire training.

Not Classic Jetliners (3) : Boeing 737-100

Wait, isn't this series about jetliners that were a commercial flop? Haven't there been 1000s of 737s built? Indeed the Boeing 737 is the most successful jet airliner to date with well over 5000 built to date but of that only 30 were of the original -100 variant. Design of the 737 began in 1964 with market research showing the need for an airliner that could carry up to 60 people later increased to 100 in consultation with the launch customer Lufthansa. However United Airlines wanted a stretched version which became the 737-200.


Boeing 737-100 prototype - Boeing image

The first 737-100 first took off on April 1967 with delivery to Lufthansa at the end of that year. However Lufthansa remained the only major customer of the type. Everyone else was buying the stretched -200 variant like crazy. Only 30 737-100s were built but over 1000 -200s. Most were to Lufthansa though the prototype was later sold to NASA.


Boeing 737 prototype in NASA service - NASA image

None of the 30 737-100s remain in service, the NASA plane being retired after 30 years of service and is now preserved in Seattle. So why did the 737-100 fail? The difference between the 2 types was not that great, the -200 was just less than 2 metres longer, but the passenger load was higher enough to appeal much more to customers. It was probably the snowball effect in sales and there being no point in Boeing promoting 2 variants that killed off the -100.

New built 737-100s were also ordered by Malaysian Airlines and Avianca though Lufthansa had 22 of the 30. The final -100 in civil service was with Aero Continente in Peru and was retired in 2005. The -100 was involved in 1 accident though there were luckily no fatalities.

Not Classic Jetliners (2) : VFW Fokker 614

The VFW 614 is unusual for a couple of reasons. It was a German designed and built jetliner (though not the first) and also had it's engines on top of the wings instead of underneath like everyone else. The VFW 614 was designed to be a small regional jet and the engines were mounted above the wings to allow usage from rough airstrips. The first VFW 614 took off in 1971.


Picture from Flug Revue

Sales were slow however, glacially slow for a number of reasons. The VFW 614 was born into the early 1970s oil shock and also was affected by Rolls-Royce's troubles at the start of that decade. By the time of the first delivery to a customer in 1975 only 10 had been ordered. In the end only 13 were bought by 3 airlines and 3 were also bought by the Luftwaffe, 21 being built in total though only 19 flew. The VFW 614 programme was cancelled in 1977. Those in airline service apparently did not last very long though the Luftwaffe examples remained in service until 1999. One remains in service with the German Aerospace Centre as an "in-flight-simulator" and has been fitted with Fly-by-Wire control systems though is it due for replacement by an Airbus A320.


Picture from Friends of the VFW 614 website

It is a shame the cute little VFW 614 was not a success, in many ways it was ahead of it's time. The market it was intended for did not really take off (pardon the pun) until the 1990s. The programme was a costly failure for VFW Fokker but it did in the end prepare VFW for working on the Airbus project and we all know how well that has gone. A number of these good looking airliners are on display and one has been restored and cleaned up by the Friends of the VFW 614!


Public domain image

Not Classic Jetliners (1) : Convair 880

In a new series i will be looking back to some of the jet airliners that never made it. These are jetliners i (usually) love but were commercial failures. This series thus harks back to a day when there was more than just Boeing and Airbus to fly on.

It is pretty much forgotten these days but back in the classic days of Boeing 707s, Douglas DC-8s and Vickers VC-10s you also had Convair's attempts at a jet airliner. The Convair 880 was not a success though and only sold 65 examples. The 880 was faster than the 707 but more expensive to run and even back in the cheap oil days of the 1960s that was key. General Dynamics made a huge loss on the 880 and it's sister airliner the 990 though one was sold to Elvis as his personal plane. By 1975 none were still in service with major airlines though a few continues in service as cargo airliners and in one case a test plane for the US Navy until the late 1990s.



I've always thought it was one of the best looking jet airliners. None are flying nowadays but a few still exist around the world, one in Portugal now serves as a strip club apparently. Despite only 65 being sold it was involved in 17 accidents and 5 hi-jackings so it was not a lucky jet.


Photo from ConvairJet.com