Originally Posted by
Sotonsean
It was N10DC, the DC-10 prototype that was on it's world "Friendship Tour". The aircraft visited London Gatwick Airport in July 1972 and was shown off to prospective customers such as British Caledonian Airways and Laker Airways.
Skirt lengths certainly look more 1972 than 1977, when the first B Cal DC-10 (G-BEBM) came.
It was a huge marketing hype trip. McDD coming from Southern California, there was all the Hollywood "pzazz" with it, to get them exposure in the various national media, including various personalities. Wasn't Sammy Davis Junior brought along in the entourage ?
Infamously, this same trip carried on from London to Istanbul, where there was a huge party for THY management, Turkish politicians ... and the ultimate result was the THY order for the DC-10-10s, which given their route structure and loads of the time looked unlikely. When first delivered THY were not at all ready, and McDD house test pilots were sent over to fly the early flights. And then there was Paris ...
Originally Posted by
treadigraph
Yep, looks like N10DC, apparently the second airframe; prototype (also N10DC) ended up with American, this one (demonstrator?) with Laker as G-BELO. Freddie got it cheap didn't he?
In a bit of extreme fastidiousness (even more so than looking beyond a bevy of girls and just noticing an ONA DC8 ...), the first two DC-10s were registered the first one as N10DC, and the second one N101AA, intended for American. At the end of 1972, thus after this trip, for some reason these two registrations were exchanged, so this one was then delivered to American, who retired it at the end of the 1990s, and it was the second one, now N10DC for a while, that eventually went to Laker and ended up in recent times with a worldwide health charity.