Aircraft – McDonnell Douglas DC-10

While Northwest’s 747 fleet in the early 1970s was busy plying the Pacific, its 707-320 passenger fleet was relegated to domestic duties where its range capability was wasted – and its capacity was too close to new 727-200s. Yet NWA had many domestic sectors that needed something with more capacity than Boeing’s narrowbodies, but not as much as a new 747.

Douglas’ DC-10 offered the step in capacity (40 First Class + 196 Economy Class seats, plus containerized cargo) between the 727 and 747 that Northwest wanted for routes such as Seattle-Spokane-Minneapolis-Chicago-Atlanta-Miami but also the legs to run Seattle-Tokyo if needed. In fact the DC-10 was scheduled on runs to Asia early in its career but its galley configuration and passenger amenities were insufficient to the task. However, it made an excellent domestic trunkliner and its 1970’s-era 2-2|2-2 seat layout was well received – leading to the long-running “Wide Cabin Airline” advertising campaign.

Donald Nyrop specified the Pratt & Whitney JT-9D engine instead of the General Electric CF6 so as to be cross-compatible with Northwest’s 747 fleet. While this increased the cost of each aircraft by $500,000, it saved the company tens of millions over the life of each airframe through reduced spare-parts inventory and faster engine swap outs. Douglas was going to call the NWA version the Series 20 (the Series 10 was a domestic-only configuration), but Nyrop insisted on calling it the Series 40 instead, as it was going to have superior performance to the Series 30 version about to be launched.

As only Northwest and Japan Air Lines ultimately took the Series 40, however, NWA would have to tap the used-aircraft market for Series 30s in the late 1980s and early 1990s to handle increased overseas traffic. By then the seating configuration was a tighter 2-5-2 (adding an additional 58 seats to every Series 40!) and the Series 30s had better equipment to serve long-haul passengers. 21 of the Series 40 and 22 of the Series 30 would eventually wear the Red Tail before finally being replaced by A330 and 757-300 equipment.

Northwest flew the DC-10 longer than United or American, and in fact was the world’s last major passenger airline to operate the type, retiring it on January 8, 2007.

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The Northwest / KLM Alliance joint-colors aircraft from November 1998:

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