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Browsing Tag: Douglas DC-10

The Last DC-10: Part 1 (Dhaka to Kuwait City)

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S2-ACR on the ramp at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport. Photo - Bernie Leighton | AirlineReporter.com

S2-ACR on the ramp at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport – Photo: Bernie Leighton | AirlineReporter

So, you want to fly on a DC-10 in 2014? Bad news. Very bad news. I hate to tell you, but that ship has sailed. Until a few days ago, that was not the case.

Arriving into Dhaka at 4:51 am, the first thing I noticed was the haze. I really have no idea where it comes from – it seems to burn off by the afternoon. The next thing I noticed about Bangladesh was how easy it was to get a visa on arrival. If you were wondering, Dhaka is only certified for CAT-1 ILS approaches. This has been known to wreck timetables and force diversions to far off points.

The first thing I noticed was that the airport has a great degree of 1970’s Marxist-chic to it. I admit, the airport actually opened for passenger use in the 1980’s- but there were many stop-and-start construction efforts that make it, in some ways, the most amazing the airport was ever (semi) completed.

I had exactly twenty four hours in Dhaka and almost no idea what to expect. Dhaka’s a very fluid city; the buildings may look the same, but the traffic is a variable no one should mess with! Thankfully, the hotel shuttle never seemed to have much of a problem finding either a semi-paved or unpaved road to beat the chaos. The other thing not included in travel brochures about Dhaka is that no matter what hour of the day, someone is riding their car horn.

But I wasn’t  in Dhaka for the traffic or interesting architecture. I was there to take the last passenger DC-10 flight ever.

A Historical Look at the DC-10 Before its Final Passenger Flight

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S2-ACR, the last DC-10 in any sort of passenger service. Photo by Ken Fielding

S2-ACR, the last DC-10 in any sort of passenger service – Photo: Ken Fielding

Starting tomorrow, the last Douglas DC-10 will start its farewell tour as the last passenger DC-10. Biman Bangladesh Airlines will fly to Birmingham, UK, by way of Kuwait and then offer scenic tours before it is finally ferried to a final “resting” location in the US. Our own Bernie Leighton will be covering these events from Bangladesh and beyond, but before we tell the last chapter of this majestic aircraft’s life, we wanted to start at the beginning with this historical look at the DC-10.

The birth of the wide-body airliner as we know it today can be traced back to one event in the early 1960’s: The United States Air Force’s request for proposals for the CX-HLS, the program that would ultimately become the C-5 Galaxy. Lockheed won the CX-HLS competition, and as legend would have it, Boeing would strike gold when they converted their design into what we know today as the 747. However, that is not quite 100% true, and Boeing was not the only company to transfer design philosophies from the CX-HLS to the commercial market.