Rear Entry
Thread Starter
Rear Entry
Now that I've got your attention ;-) I have taken 2 flights recently where I was sitting on the last 2 rows of the aircraft and did both a rear entry and exit both sectors, so in fact it was no real hardship I don't normally sit at the back for whatever reasons, but not the "I only turn left darling" attributed to a Sloane-y acquaintance back in the 90's. At the rear of the aircraft the last 2 overhead lockers on both sides covering 4 rows of seats were very full with items belonging to the crew and company, rendering no storage space for those who had paid for larger cabin baggage items. The crew just shrugged their shoulders and were no help to those affected. So my question is why do both airlines and manufacturers plan and allow this to happen ? I had a small rucksack, so could tuck it under the seat in front, but for many of the others it was either 'steal' overhead space from other passengers in the rows in front causing arguments , or suffer the matter of no foot/leg space. In this case the aircraft were Airbus, but in the past I've seen it on Boeing and McDonnell Douglas et al when visiting the rear toilets and galley. Why purposely annoy and alienate the very people paying for your services, namely the customers ? Surely the crew deserve a small space, even one that goes under floor level to house their personal items etc ? Thoughts welcomed, it just seems illogical, rather like those lovely IFE boxes that BA used to have on the 777's that took more than half of the passenger's footspace on long haul flights.
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Got my attention, didn't read the post, but I know when it's about to happen, that's when my female AME whips out a blue glove from the box. I comply naturally. God thanks for lubrication.. Have I derailed this thread ? Goodbye.
Son of Slot
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Gargleblaster You are a very naughty boy. 
I am sure that everyone thought that SpringHeeledJack was referring to the built in air-stairs on the B727.
Then, DaveReidUK clouds the situation with "If push came to shove ..." TskTsk
I am sure that everyone thought that SpringHeeledJack was referring to the built in air-stairs on the B727.
Then, DaveReidUK clouds the situation with "If push came to shove ..." TskTsk
Thread Starter
I was S.o.S and have done it many times and on DC-9's of all sizes over the years as well ;-)
I thought that there might be more discussion on this subject, but I suppose on reflection 'down the back' for most of us is out of sight and out of mind. Perhaps if the situation was further up the cabin it would have come to head many moons ago.
I thought that there might be more discussion on this subject, but I suppose on reflection 'down the back' for most of us is out of sight and out of mind. Perhaps if the situation was further up the cabin it would have come to head many moons ago.
Too mean to buy a long personal title
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Thread Starter
I have noted on wide-bodies the middle galley outside area having the odd issue with the closest locker, but there should be even less of a chance due to the gauge of the larger aircraft, surely ? It just perplexes me that something so obviously fixable is seemingly never fixed, or at least not thought about, or perhaps cared about ?
Son of Slot
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SpringingJack you have just scraped back under the wire for reminding us of the DC-9 air stairs.
Any stories of Front Airstairs, as older 737s sometimes had?
Any stories of Front Airstairs, as older 737s sometimes had?
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Rear Entry Heaven LOL
The Caravelle was the first Jet to have rear Ventral airstairs.
The BAC 1-11 (well, most of them) had airstairs both Forward and an Aft ventral, as did the DC-9 and Super 80 (except our six BMA Baby 9's that only had front stairs).
The 727 had the same options to have both, although many 727 operators omitted the forward ones.
Wardair had both fitted to their 727 CF-FUN for their intense Transatlantic charter operations, with refuelling stops at remote Greenland and Iceland airports.
The 737 had forward ones, and only a few, such as Condor's 737-130's and Mey Air's also had the Rear entry door that came with stairs built in as a Drop down feature.
TUI (Thomson Airways) for some reason never took the 737 front stairs option again after retiring their Britannia Airways 737-200's.
Today, Ryanair still has the forward airstair option fitted on its 737NG's and on their new 'Max' 737M8-200's.
(No idea if that also will be fitted on the larger 737M-10 variant)
The Court Line and LTU Tristars first came with a very elaborate folding arm 'double width' airstair that extended out of the Rear cargo hold.
Didn't last more than a couple of summers.
PSA's Tristars (they ordered 5) came with a forward drop down airstair/door that lead into the Lower Deck lounge from where a staircase ascended to the main deck cabin.
3 of those aircraft remained unsold when PSA did NTU their full order; Lockheed eventually after a couple of years, struck a deal with LTU to take them.
LTU often used the forward stairs.
Worldways Canada ended up with the other 2 aircraft.
Leased to BMA for 2 days to op LHR-MME
That's me, far left under the nose SEN 1967
LTU Tristar forward drop down airstair at Colombo
Ibiza - rear entry heaven --- Can you imagine the din!
Wardair had both stairs fitted
Last edited by rog747; 20th Feb 2024 at 06:22.
Thread Starter
Love the photos Rog! The 1-11 and the Caravelle! I'd forgotten about the rear ventral stairs on them and did my last flight on a 1-11 (incl rear exit) at LGW in a Dan Air example having flown in from Milan Malpensa in 1993-ish, and an Air Inter Caravelle a few years before that on an internal French flight. On all, the passage way that housed the ventral stairs wasn't exactly wide if memory serves.
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-In 1979 I boarded an Aeroperu 727. At least that was what it said on the outside. Inside it was pure Lufthansa down to the emergency instruction sheet. We sat on Lima airport for a while and then they offloaded us (weather in Cuzco). They used the ventral airstairs and the woman in front of me got to the bottom of the stairs, stopped, pulled out her cigrattes and lighter and tried to light up. I'm glad to say she failed.
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I'll have a can of BA's BrewDog House Blend called Speedbird OG Transatlantic IPA, which I recently sampled in Club Europe - all rather nice.
Hartington
Your Aeroperu 727 was ex Lufthansa Boeing 727-30C c/n 19312
broken up LIM 6/94
OB-R-1141 dd 3/78 to Aeroperu
D-ABIU dd 5/67 to Lufthansa Ulm
I forgot to mention that the Fokker F28 and F100/70 family had a drop down forward passenger entry door with stairs fitted.
Some F100 operators, such as Air Europe and British Midland Airways went for a conventional entry door with no stairs.
Airbus did plan for forward airstairs as an option for the A320.
BCAL actually went for this option on their A320 order and had them fitted to at least five aircraft (Not delivered to BCAL)
Article and photos here as delivered to British Airways in 1988/1989.
BCAL/BA A320 airstairs
A BCAL ordered A320
Here are the new 737 MAX 8-200 stairs in operation in 2024, with no obvious difference to the 1967 737-200 design.
737M 8-200
737M 8-200
Airbus did plan for forward airstairs on the A320...
BCAL actually went for this option on their first A320s, but no one else did....
Hence todays wait for 2 sets of steps to draw up, although I have to say that the Greeks are pretty swift, and they have 'steps on' PDQ at the Greek Island Holiday Airports..
Paxing All Over The World
I recall using the 737 ones and the 727 a couple of times. The system stored in the cargo hold must have weighed a fair bit. No surprise it did not catch on.
The picture of the LTU Tristar looks like a baggage belt, again, heavy.
The picture of the LTU Tristar looks like a baggage belt, again, heavy.
In those days the arrival of an aircraft with more than 300 passengers at a small Mediterranean airport not yet equipped to handle such a large volume of people which often meant congestion of passenger and ground handling facilities.
To combat this problem both Court Line and LTU took up the option of integral rear airstairs in the main aft cargo hold, which could be extended without outside assistance.
The TriStars also came with electric baggage-loading belts at all 3 hold doors for bulk loaded luggage. (No ULD-AVE's were able to be used then)
However, these features meant additional weight and thus increased fuel and maintenance costs so, as the holiday airports gradually developed, these features were removed.
Both Court Line and LTU removed the cargo hold Rear airstairs during the winters when the planes went off to do long haul, such as to UVF ANU and MBA.
They never got put back on LTU after around a couple of seasons use, and of course Court Line then went under.
The LTU picture in my OP shows the Forward air stairs 'whilst in motion' as it unfolds to open down to the ground.
Only 5 L1011's were ever fitted with this.
All were -1's of the PSA order for 5, of which they only flew 2 in service.
Cathay Pacific were due to buy this pair of -1's, but did NTU in the end.
CX in the end ordered a brand new pair of HGW -100's for 1975
(which were CX's only brand new Tristar orders).
I was always surprised as to why LTU did not snap up Court Line's pair of -1's in 1974.
Those 2 also sat stored in the Desert until Cathay eventually took them on in 1977.
The other 3 ex PSA -1's sat unsold until LTU did a deal with Lockheed in early 1977 to take all 3 in Part Exchange for LTU's remaining -1 option, and to sell and lease back their first -1,
D-AERA to Eastern Airlines.
One of the PSA trio, D-AERU was converted to a -100 TriStar and was delivered to LTU later during 1977.
The original TriStar -1 was possible to have a conversion to the high gross weight L-1011-100, which in this case gave the aircraft the range to fly DUS-JFK non-stop.
Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA) had ordered five L-1011s for its high-density California routes in 1970.
After receiving two in 1974 they were soon subsequently grounded due to their high operating costs when fuel prices had tripled, the airline then refused to take delivery of the final three it had on order.
This meant that Lockheed was stuck with three TriStars built with an interior designed specifically for PSA, including a lower-level passenger lounge converted from the cargo hold and lower deck galley areas, and also with an airstair, making the models incredibly difficult to sell on.
Despite filing a lawsuit against PSA, Lockheed worked with the airline to market the redundant aircraft, creating a full-colour brochure in June 1975 which promoted their specific design for short-haul high density operations or IT charters.
Included were provisions for the installation of the galley areas back up onto the main deck, although no offer was made to remove the downstairs lounge configuration.
A sale to Avianca Airlines of Colombia fell through in August 1976.
Discussions then began with LTU and in October that year an agreement was made to return its two initial TriStar -1s and replace them with the three new undelivered jets.
This would give the German carrier the high-density layout perfect for its charter operation, with a consistent standard of cabin configuration across the fleet.
As the new TriStars arrived LTU was able to expand into more long-haul operations, launching flights to Miami in November 1976.
Flights were also added to New York and Los Angeles in May 1977, with Sri Lanka and Bangkok joining the network as its first Asian destinations in November 1977, followed by the Maldives in 1981.
The L-1011 Tristar became LTU’s sole aircraft type suiting both the peak destinations such as Palma Ibiza Rhodes and Las Palmas, plus for long haul too.
Despite reservations about the lower-deck lounge, these remained in use with LTU until 1984 when they were removed by Eastern Airlines engineers in Miami.
Known as the ‘Club Lounge’ the exclusive area was reached by a staircase from the forward cabin and had a leather-framed bar, sofa style seats and, as there were no windows, two illuminated picture frames showing an exotic sun-kissed Spanish landscape.
It could accommodate 16 passengers who had the chance to upgrade for a small fee with meals served on china, extra snacks and free alcoholic drinks.
Unfolding
Forward airstair in use
Rear Hold airstairs LTU
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The 727's rear airstair was modified to incorporate the Cooper Vane after several notorious inflight incidents over the US... were any other types so modified?
Now that I've got your attention ;-) I have taken 2 flights recently where I was sitting on the last 2 rows of the aircraft and did both a rear entry and exit both sectors, so in fact it was no real hardship I don't normally sit at the back for whatever reasons, but not the "I only turn left darling" attributed to a Sloane-y acquaintance back in the 90's. At the rear of the aircraft the last 2 overhead lockers on both sides covering 4 rows of seats were very full with items belonging to the crew and company, rendering no storage space for those who had paid for larger cabin baggage items. The crew just shrugged their shoulders and were no help to those affected. So my question is why do both airlines and manufacturers plan and allow this to happen ? I had a small rucksack, so could tuck it under the seat in front, but for many of the others it was either 'steal' overhead space from other passengers in the rows in front causing arguments , or suffer the matter of no foot/leg space. In this case the aircraft were Airbus, but in the past I've seen it on Boeing and McDonnell Douglas et al when visiting the rear toilets and galley. Why purposely annoy and alienate the very people paying for your services, namely the customers ? Surely the crew deserve a small space, even one that goes under floor level to house their personal items etc ? Thoughts welcomed, it just seems illogical, rather like those lovely IFE boxes that BA used to have on the 777's that took more than half of the passenger's footspace on long haul flights.
With regard to the large IFE boxes under the seats, again it's all down to what airlines think passengers want and what passenger expectations are regarding IFE. I remember when I started working on airliners, then still had in-flight projectors, mounted up in the ceiling, that were so heavy they had to be winced up into position [You definitely wouldn't want one of those falling down on you!]
Airlines don't always get thing right though regarding what they think passengers will want. One of the big 'flops' for the vast majority of carriers were the in-flight telephone systems. They were just far too expensive for the majority of passengers to ever think of using..
Turn around time is a major factor for airlines, particularly low cost ones and you’d be surprised how long it takes to get 200+ passengers off an aircraft. Only then can the security sweep, cleaning and restocking begin. Single aisle aircraft can be worse as it only takes one pax blocking the aisle for the whole process to grind to a halt.
It’s not always possible to use the rear door as the gate may not be equipped with two aero bridges and if steps are used there has to be security in attendance to monitor the pax because they can’t be unsupervised on the tarmac.
Built in aircraft steps aren’t as good as they seem, they add to the purchase price of the aircraft, are dead weight flown around and require maintenance when they break down. Typically pax can only embark and disembark in single file and there may be a limit to how many in total can be on the steps at once. Ground based steps are much stronger, allow dual file and are not normally limited in how many people can be on them at the same time.
Every minute counts, with turn around times of around 30 minutes being targeted.
It’s not always possible to use the rear door as the gate may not be equipped with two aero bridges and if steps are used there has to be security in attendance to monitor the pax because they can’t be unsupervised on the tarmac.
Built in aircraft steps aren’t as good as they seem, they add to the purchase price of the aircraft, are dead weight flown around and require maintenance when they break down. Typically pax can only embark and disembark in single file and there may be a limit to how many in total can be on the steps at once. Ground based steps are much stronger, allow dual file and are not normally limited in how many people can be on them at the same time.
Every minute counts, with turn around times of around 30 minutes being targeted.
Thread Starter
I'm enjoying the nostalgic tangent the thread has taken, used to love seeing those LTU TriStars here and there back in the day.
Regarding the original question, I get that turn arounds are pressure filled endeavours, especially for low-cost carriers and I get that passengers prefer to take cabin baggage that is larger than it used to be (though they are charged a pretty penny for this courtesy) but as I see things atm, at least 12 fare paying passengers, who might well have paid extra to bring their luggage onboard with them have no available storage space because it will have been taken by the airline staff and airline equipment. It just surprises me that after so many years of product development by both airlines and aircraft manufacturers, that there isn't enough space designed into each aircraft that allows passengers free access to cabin storage and sufficient storage for staff items. I appreciate that this obviously isn't at the top of anyone's priority list and I have only given it thought due to sitting in and observing the repercussions of storage scarcity at the rear of the aircraft. Being pedantic, it's a kind of commercial prejudice where those sitting at the back of the aircraft aren't enjoying the same conditions as those everywhere else. That said, they are close to the rear toilets, so it's not all bad ;-)
Regarding the original question, I get that turn arounds are pressure filled endeavours, especially for low-cost carriers and I get that passengers prefer to take cabin baggage that is larger than it used to be (though they are charged a pretty penny for this courtesy) but as I see things atm, at least 12 fare paying passengers, who might well have paid extra to bring their luggage onboard with them have no available storage space because it will have been taken by the airline staff and airline equipment. It just surprises me that after so many years of product development by both airlines and aircraft manufacturers, that there isn't enough space designed into each aircraft that allows passengers free access to cabin storage and sufficient storage for staff items. I appreciate that this obviously isn't at the top of anyone's priority list and I have only given it thought due to sitting in and observing the repercussions of storage scarcity at the rear of the aircraft. Being pedantic, it's a kind of commercial prejudice where those sitting at the back of the aircraft aren't enjoying the same conditions as those everywhere else. That said, they are close to the rear toilets, so it's not all bad ;-)
One of the modern overhead carry-on baggage scrambles for space is the upper deck of an A380 in economy configuration.
In terms of "rear entry"....it is still regularly practised down here at CPT when boarding (but rarely deplaning) a wide body parked on one of the remote Eastern stands. In fact I always think its a rather lovely way to leave the Mother City on a fine evening (not so good I appreciate when its pissing down). Have also, in recent memory, used the rear steps boarding at DXB remote stands
Back in September 2011 I did a Scandi loop, LHR-GOT-ARN-CPH-LHR, just to fly the SAS Mad-Dogs (enjoying 2 x MD81's and 1 x MD87) before they were retired and was treated to a deplaning via the rear drop steps at ARN....the last time I ever enjoyed this unique feature, which like so many others noted, was a common experience the 1-11 heyday
In terms of "rear entry"....it is still regularly practised down here at CPT when boarding (but rarely deplaning) a wide body parked on one of the remote Eastern stands. In fact I always think its a rather lovely way to leave the Mother City on a fine evening (not so good I appreciate when its pissing down). Have also, in recent memory, used the rear steps boarding at DXB remote stands
Back in September 2011 I did a Scandi loop, LHR-GOT-ARN-CPH-LHR, just to fly the SAS Mad-Dogs (enjoying 2 x MD81's and 1 x MD87) before they were retired and was treated to a deplaning via the rear drop steps at ARN....the last time I ever enjoyed this unique feature, which like so many others noted, was a common experience the 1-11 heyday
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