Originally Posted by
DaveReidUK
All the slats were extended. No 7, previously misaligned, subsequently failed to retract when the others did.
The story that was floating around Boeing at the time was that there was a belief that you could get a little better cruise speed and fuel burn if you extended the flaps a bit (flaps 1?) - but to do it you had to pull circuit breakers to keep the leading edge slats from also going out. Supposedly, the flight engineer was out of the cockpit and the pilots decided to try it - then the flight engineer came back in - saw the CBs out and put them back in. Due to the aero loads, only one set of slats deployed which immediately rolled the aircraft into a dive - which they managed to recover from only when the deployed stats were ripped off...
No idea of there is any truth to it...
Originally Posted by
Webby737
I worked on many B727s back in the 90s but my favourites were the UPS -100s, they had been re-engined with RR Tays and retrofitted with a glass cockpit and head up display.
I was helping out on a flight line aircraft down at Boeing Field many years ago when one of those took off - at the time I didn't know about the re-engine but could hear an obvious difference. I was informed about the re-engine by one of the people I was working with. Good for fuel burn, but I think the main driver was noise (UPS normally operates in the middle of the night and was running into curfew problems with the JT8Ds). A while after that, UPS had an all engine flameout at cruise with the Tay installation (they got them re-started and landed safely). Anyway the FAA came to Boeing and wanted an explanation of how that could happen - and Boeing politely told them 'that engine installations is an STC, we were not involved and know almost nothing about it. Go talk to your people who granted the STC'
In the mid 1970s, Boeing was all set to launch a 727-300 program, using a re-fanned JT8D-200. United was to be the launch customer. But right before the planned launch announcement United suddenly got cold feet and pulled out and the program was quietly shelved. However the engine was eventually used for the MD-80.