AEROMEDIA
The Italian Aerospace Information Web
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The decline of commercial tri-jets

Boeing recently announced that the production of MD-11 will be stopped within a couple of years, when the last of 22 aircraft still on order will be rolled out at the former McDonnell Douglas Long Beach plants, with a total production run of 200 aircraft.
MD-11, a derivate of the DC-10, is the last tri-jet commercial aircraft still in production today, exception given for Russia. The tri-jets airliners era began in the sixties with Boeing 727, which made its first flight in 1963 and remained in production till 1984, when the 1831st aircraft of that type was delivered. The British Trident was far less a commercial success and the Soviet counterpart Tupolev Tu-154 was substantial sold only to airlines in the Eastern countries.
In the seventies, both Lockheed and McDonnell Douglas developed similar wide-body tri-jets, in the form of TriStar and DC-10. Lockheed was forced out of the commercial aircraft market by the TriStar limited diffusion and MDC tried a second and vain chance with the MD-11.

In the pictures: the MD-11 prototype N4896X, during lay-up at Long Beach, March 1992. Alitalia Team's MD-11 I-DUPA, first aircraft of this type produced in Combi configuration.

(Aeromedia, July 1998)