DC-10 and Tristar
 

Did anyone other than BA operate both?

Pan Am, Delta Hawaiian (I think) all operated both types but not necessarily at the same time.

BA didn’t really have ‘their own’ DC10’s. The first they operated were Air NewZealand aircraft firstly between LAX and LHR return.this was extended due to down time in LHR to various USA routes.

Then they inherited some from British Caledonian.

I remember when the ANZ DC-10's first arrived at LHR, very exotic, had all the spotters agog for a while until they became commonplace.

United had L1011s and DC10s.

I believe the L1011s came when they got Panam's Pacific routes.

National were another early operator of DC-10s into LHR. I'm not sure whether they first came before or after ANZ.

At a guess going back that far I think the national DC10s were at LHR before the NZ ones , complete with their politically incorrect advertising and WW2 nose art with the girls names under the flight deck windows.

I think there were occasional 'Euro' Dc10s into LHR too, for busy flights after disruption or football matches SAS used them i think and KLM and occasionally Finnair but these were not really scheduled . Ghana airways had a solitary one too.

As for dual operators I think Eastern had a couple of DC10s on lease at some point and were a big L1011 operator , Mostly it was one or the other and anyone who had both acquired the smaller fleet through a non conventional route-ie they never set out to own them.

Personally I saw a great deal of both types in BA service as they were maintays of LHR-BDA tristars and then LGW-BDA DC10s . Personal opinion was the Tristar was a much nice aircraft very stable comfortable ride. One thing the 10 had in its favour in BA service was a very small forward Y cabin with only about 3 rows of seats which was quite nice and secluded

BA cabin crew flew on both ANZ DC10 and Tristar. The drivers on Tristar always said DC10 “was stone age technology”.

At least the DC10 could get from the UK to the USA without frequently having to go via Bangor Maine!

Eastern was a big L-1011 operator but they were all -1' for domestic service. On getting the Miami-London authority they picked up three ex-Aitalia DC-10-30's which were originally going to Fed Ex. Worked out nicely for the GE CF6-50 engines on the A300's were the same model and the QEC only needed minor changes to swap from one to the other.
The A300's assigned to the Air Shuttle - KLGA to KBOS - had about a 1 - 1 ratio of cycles to hours. We would swap them off for the DC-10 engines which, on the long range circuits had a high hours to cycle ratio. So a Shuttle A300 engine with lots of cycles could still enjoy a lot of us on the DC-10 while the high hour engines still had lots of cycles left for the Shuttle. .

Correct me if I am mistaken but I've always believed Bangor, Maine to be in USA!

Eastern operated their L1011 into LGW when they first started their route across the pond and before they had their DC-10's

I took these photos at LGW. These images are scanned from photos so a bit grainy

N382EA, Lockheed L1011 Tristar 1, Eastern, LGW, 1985 Feb 07

N391EA, Douglas DC10-30, Eastern Airlines. LGW, 1985 Jul 03.

There was quite a lengthy argument over DC-10 pay rates at EA, which might have put some L-1011s on the route sporadically. They were some high-time -10s, too. MIA-LGW, return, then MIA-EZE-SCL-MIA and so on.

GF

Bit of a tangent but the first DC-10 into Heathrow was MDC's demonstrator N1338U* on 9 August 1972 for BEA to have a last-chance looky. They had been trailling Lockheed along for most of the year and I suppose Mc thought they could swing it their way.

Three days later demo L1011 N305EA bailed from Eastern arrived at Luton for the 'rivals' BCal, BMA and Dan Air to view.

Funny how the BEA and BCal fleet selections went the opposite way!

* That DC-10-10 survived until 2013, flying with FedEx in its later years. The TriStar was chopped in 2002 after serving Delta for many years.

It then carried on to Heathrow, where it stayed for several days for BEA engineers to crawl over, before appearing at the Farnborough show the following month with BEA titles and a Speedjack on the tail.

Didn't know the Heathrow bit for the Trimotor, thanks!

Ironically less than two years later BEA became involved with the DC-10 again when Turkish Airlines' TC-JAV went down near Paris in March 1974. The majority of passengers were on BEA tickets, being conveyed by THY due to a BEA baggage handlers' strike, but Turkey wasn't a signatory to the Warsaw Convention. As a result there was an involved legal process to determine the compensation payable to each passenger's family.

As an aside from the above photo, back in the day it wasn't so unusual to see larger aircraft ferrying an engine on behalf of an AOG aircraft down route. I can't remember the last time I saw this. Is it that these days a quick call to Ivan and his Antonovs solves the conundrum ?

Harry Wayfarers, The closer wing engine appears to have a smaller intake than #3.
Is that an illusion?

I wouldn't know ... I'm not that technically minded :)

Yes, at Laker, two A300's each had an engine blow on take-off from ACE, that's A300's rather than a DC10's, no problem but to launch a podded DC10 from LGW to exchange engines whilst bringing the stranded passengers back home.

But the idea of the pod, as I recall, was for ferrying engines back and forth across the pond for overhauls with the manufacturer ... No need for Antonov's in those days :) ... There was an occassion when BCal enquired if they could borrow our pod ... The response they received wasn't quite so polite :)