My favorite jet: Boeing's 727.
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Sunday, July 15, 2018
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The Jurassic Jet! Always loved a Seven-Two because it made the sequence easy...he’s first, period. Flew like a bat outta hell! It was noisy as hell too, despite Eastern branding their fleet “WhisperJets”. Mexicana flew them the longest of the mainline carriers that we saw, and were still tankering gas to O’Hare from Mexico City to the end. The planes would be totally full of gas for the MMMX leg to KORD to minimize the fuel buy at KORD, for the return leg, because fuel was so cheap at MMMX.
ReplyDelete@EB,
ReplyDeleteJust curious - what about the venerable 727 makes it a fave? Thx.
Brad, my first-ever airplane ride was on a brand-new AA 727.
ReplyDelete(My second, the return flight, was on a UAL DC-7.)
My dad was head of Dispatcher Operations at Eastern Airlines when they folded. He was also an FAA dispatcher class instructor and FAA examiner years ago, and would base the classes on the 727 (and later the 757). He's got the complete Eastern manuals for both aircraft lying about in his home office. Needless to say, we rode on quite a few 727s back in the day.
ReplyDeleteI still see a few cargo 727s flying about here. I worked one recently and it hit me right in the nostalgia feels.
Brad, the Seven-Two was designed before fuel prices rose, so it was built with a wing that was optimized to fly fast, around Mach .85. Most commercial jets now fly in the M .7-.8 range. It was also build with a gadget wing for lots of lift at low speeds, desite it's large sweepback. These two choices caused some of the difficulties with the plane, the complex flap systems took careful maintainance work and the voracious fuel appitite made the accountants unhappy in the mid-70's. That being said, despite being one of the noisiest commerical jets, its performace made it a crew favorite, although the required three person crew wasn't an airline favorite either.
ReplyDeleteAfter the fule prices rose, the Seven-Two moved into the developing world, where its good short field performance was needed, its ability to takeoff from hot and high fields was a plus, and the necessary third crew member wasn't as much of a costly issue. Even with a hush kit, which used a complex assembly to mix exterior air with jet exhaust to mute noise levels, the 727 can only just be made to meet Stage 3 noise levels. Since any jet over 75,000 lbs has to be Stage 3 compliant to fly in the U.S., that's an added cost to operators...and we can expect Stage 4 to be required in the future, something the Seven-Two simply can't do.
Watching that, I had two questions:
ReplyDelete1) I saw winglets on the wings, and yet I thought Boeing had stopped producing the 727. I wouldn't think they would retrofit winglets since that would change the wing airflow. Because of the airflow change, it'd force a complete aircraft recertification for the airframe, and I couldn't see the operators going to that expense.
2) I saw the pure jet engines, and wondered about reengining the airframe with fan bypass engines. It could be done with the two on the pylons, although you couldn't do the tail. I know operators have reengined other types of aircraft, simply for the fuel efficacy.
Thoughts?
Steve Sky- per the Wikipedia 727 article, the winglets are available as aftermarket kits. It also mentions re-engining.
ReplyDeleteHushkits and winglets were heavily driven by FedEx, and they actually sell them. The work to certify adding winglets is really quite simple.
ReplyDeleteReenginning is a totally different story. There are two different options, with one simply using a more advanced version of the same old JT8D on the pylons. This easy version replaced the centerline engine reverser with a straight pipe, and called it a day. Certification was pretty straight forward, and was known as the Super 27.
The other version used RR Tays in all three spots and required a complete reengineering of the tail, intake and S-duct. That was neither cheap nor easy to certify, and barely made a mark in the market.
Ocverall, the planes were too old, too noisy and required a three man flight crew.