Question about airliners

[GregP]

Heard a rather tragic story today at the Museum from a guy who there in Viet Nam. His name is Juri Van der Wood, and he used to fly for the Dutch Air Force after WWII, and came to the USA, became a citizen, and joined the USAF.

He was at Takhli in Thailand. He said an F-100 came into the landing pattern and made his approach, and near touchdown began a rapid descent. The pilot hit afterburner and raised the nose and retracted the gear! The nose went up to about 75° and the F-100 did a perfect, nose-high, tail-walk all the way down the runway while descending very slowly. Near the end, the horizontal stabilators touched down, the pilot pulled power and the F-100 flopped down on the runway and slid to a stop without catching fire!

They went out to the plane as rapidly as they could and found the pilot dead in the cockpit ... he had thrown up in his mask, inhaled it, and it was in his lungs. Had he not done that, he would have survived a Sabre Dance! The plane was repaired and flew ops again afterward!

What a shame.

 

[The Basket]

"The 727 was a solid, easy to maintain aircraft and in some areas superior to what's flying today".

Agreed. . . I fly a lot. Almost exclusively Southwest, which means 737. I got thinking about the narrow-body 7x7's and wondered why Boeing dropped the 727. I know it had noise issues and center engine could not be easily upgraded to a modern, more quiet, high bypass fan.

Why not upgrade the two outer engines and eliminate the third? You would then have all the benefits of the clean wing that the 727 enjoyed, and avoid the FOD, vacuum cleaner issues presented by the 737.

Boeing did offer a new 727 but the 757 was the replacement not the 737.
757 is no longer in production but some bigger 737 variants are gettting close to the size of the 757.
No T-tails and rear engines no more. Apart from biz jets.

 

[nuuumannn]

There are 737NG variants that have the same capacity as the 727, despite the 757 being built to replace it. One thing about the 757 is that it was designed to be able to operate within the same parameters as the 737, ie. use the same runways etc, but be able to carry more across a greater distance. It's a beast of an aeroplane and a worthy successor the the 727 as its more capable than the three holer on two engines.

No T-tails and rear engines no more. Apart from biz jets.

Unless they manage to get UDFs (unducted fans) going again. There are a couple of firms including Airbus interested in the projected economy of future UDFs.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unducted_fan