I'm kidding of course.... Just "Yanking" your chain. And maybe it was actually a .76 cruise that was marketed to us... can't remember now.
But with only a 15 degree sweep of the wing compared to 25 degrees on the 727, it just couldn't survive some American Airways speeds imho. Cruising below .72M in the LA corridor, for example, guaranteed you were going to get vectored off the airway to let everybody else by... and then it wasn't long before atc just wouldn't give you higher, they'd make you file your "canned" plan in the twenties and that would be it. Tangled up with the turboprop traffic. Stay down and slow down. Turn off and slow down. This, in my opinion was part of what made it loose favor with operators in the Wild Wild West.
But those were the days when fuel was cheap and the name of the game was to reduce your lease time. So there's a certain amount of truth to what you say. We did attempt to fly it to the MMO at first. Later we pulled it back and went out of business as the even bigger cowboy airlines rocketed by us on the airways. And I was number 28!!!!
Much of the machine was ahead of it's time. It was the quietest machine on the field, fun looking and comfortable and I would have flow it for 18 years if I had been given the chance.
It really should have been given greater exposure to U.S. markets. Too bad random route ATC capabilities were not around then. Might have been a different story.
Cheers,
pac