AP 118 · No. 10 Section II · Aircraft Plate 221 / 235

Plate 221 of 235 · Cold War · Long-range wide-body trijet airliner

McDonnell Douglas DC-10

McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30 (1970), painted as G-DMCA, DC-10-30 c/n 48266, first flown at Long Beach in November 1980, delivered to Zambia Airways as N3016Z in July 1984, flown by Monarch Airlines as G-DMCA from March 1996 until it was withdrawn in late 2001 and broken up at Manchester, where its forward fuselage has been displayed at the Runway Visitor Park since 2003: McDonnell Douglas’s long-range wide-body trijet of 165 ft span, with a third engine mounted straight through the base of the fin, a two-wheel centre-line main gear between the two four-wheel bogies and three General Electric CF6-50 turbofans, shown complete as it flew with Monarch, standing on its undercarriage: white upper fuselage, fin and engine pods, pale grey lower fuselage, grey wings and tailplane, a gold-yellow window band over a black band running from the yellow nose to the tail, black ‘Monarch’ titles ahead of the wing and ‘DC-10-30’ aft of it, white ‘G-DMCA’ on the black band and black ‘G-DMCA’ under the port wing, and Monarch’s black crowned ‘M’ on the fin (shape from the Wikimedia Commons DC-10-30 three-view, with dimensions and the undercarriage layout from McDonnell Douglas’s airport planning manual, and the paint and markings following photographs of G-DMCA in service, 1996–2001).

3D model

Turn it over

A procedural model built in Blender from published dimensions, drawings and photographs, painted as G-DMCA, DC-10-30 c/n 48266, first flown at Long Beach in November 1980, delivered to Zambia Airways as N3016Z in July 1984, flown by Monarch Airlines as G-DMCA from March 1996 until it was withdrawn in late 2001 and broken up at Manchester, where its forward fuselage has been displayed at the Runway Visitor Park since 2003: McDonnell Douglas’s long-range wide-body trijet of 165 ft span, with a third engine mounted straight through the base of the fin, a two-wheel centre-line main gear between the two four-wheel bogies and three General Electric CF6-50 turbofans, shown complete as it flew with Monarch, standing on its undercarriage: white upper fuselage, fin and engine pods, pale grey lower fuselage, grey wings and tailplane, a gold-yellow window band over a black band running from the yellow nose to the tail, black ‘Monarch’ titles ahead of the wing and ‘DC-10-30’ aft of it, white ‘G-DMCA’ on the black band and black ‘G-DMCA’ under the port wing, and Monarch’s black crowned ‘M’ on the fin (shape from the Wikimedia Commons DC-10-30 three-view, with dimensions and the undercarriage layout from McDonnell Douglas’s airport planning manual, and the paint and markings following photographs of G-DMCA in service, 1996–2001). Drag to orbit, scroll or pinch to zoom · download .glb (2.3 MB)

Data plate

Specification

First flight, number built and top speed are for the whole family (forward fuselage); engine, crew and dimensions are for the McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30 (1970) modelled here.

History

The DC-10-30

In 1966 American Airlines asked the manufacturers for a wide-body airliner smaller than the Boeing 747, able to carry about 250 passengers from Chicago to Los Angeles and to use the shorter runways of airports such as New York’s La Guardia. Douglas, newly merged with McDonnell, answered with the DC-10: a twin-aisle airliner with three engines, two under the wings and the third mounted straight through the base of the fin, so its air came in without the S-shaped duct of the rival Lockheed TriStar. American and United ordered it in 1968, the first DC-10 flew from Long Beach on 29 August 1970, and both airlines put it into service on 5 August 1971.

The first aircraft were the DC-10-10, built for American domestic routes. The long-range DC-10-30 followed, first flown on 21 June 1972, with more powerful CF6-50 engines, more fuel, a longer wing and a third, two-wheel main undercarriage leg under the centre fuselage to carry the extra weight, and it became the most widely sold version, flown by KLM, Swissair, Lufthansa, British Caledonian and many others. In Britain, Laker Airways flew the DC-10 on its cut-price Skytrain service from Gatwick to New York from 1977. The US Air Force bought 60 KC-10A Extender tankers, the last DC-10s built, and the type was developed into the longer MD-11 of 1990.

The DC-10’s early years were scarred by accidents. A badly designed rear cargo door blew out over Windsor, Ontario, in 1972, and in March 1974 the same fault brought down a Turkish Airlines DC-10 near Paris, killing all 346 on board. In May 1979 an engine tore away from an American Airlines DC-10 on take-off at Chicago O’Hare, killing 273, and the type was grounded in the United States for five weeks, though the cause was later traced to faulty maintenance rather than the design. The faults were cured, and the DC-10 went on to a long career with airlines and charter operators; Biman Bangladesh flew the last passenger service in February 2014.

This airframe

McDonnell Douglas DC-10-30 G-DMCA

G-DMCAThe airframe modelled

G-DMCA (c/n 48266) first flew at Long Beach on 25 November 1980. It was built for Egyptair, which did not take it up, and was delivered instead to Zambia Airways on 30 July 1984, still carrying the American registration N3016Z. After Zambia Airways collapsed, Monarch Airlines took it over on 1 March 1996 as G-DMCA and flew it on long-haul holiday charters, many of them from Manchester to Florida. It was withdrawn in late 2001, its last passenger flight having been from Manchester to Orlando-Sanford, and it was broken up at Manchester Airport, where the forward fuselage was saved and has been displayed at the Runway Visitor Park since 2003; visitors can walk through the flight deck and front cabin. The nose has since been repainted in Monarch’s later dark-blue scheme, which G-DMCA never wore in service. The model shows it complete, as it flew with Monarch, standing on its undercarriage: white upper fuselage, fin and engine pods, pale grey lower fuselage, grey wings and tailplane, a gold-yellow window band over a black band running from the yellow nose to the tail, black ‘Monarch’ titles ahead of the wing and ‘DC-10-30’ aft of it, white ‘G-DMCA’ on the black band, black ‘G-DMCA’ under the port wing, and Monarch’s black crowned ‘M’ on the fin. The shape follows the Wikimedia Commons DC-10-30 three-view, with the dimensions and undercarriage layout from McDonnell Douglas’s airport planning manual, and the paint and markings follow photographs of G-DMCA in service between 1996 and 2001.

See it at Runway Visitor Park, Manchester Airport

Where to see one

In the gazetteer

The gazetteer records the DC-10-30 in one UK collection. The airframe modelled here is marked.

Every airframe and serial All 235 plates

Profiles and models are procedural interpretations built in Blender from published dimensions, three-view drawings and photographs of each airframe. Treat the museum aircraft as the reference.