B
y the end of the 1950s jet travel
had become the fashion on long-
haul routes, with the Boeing 707,
Douglas DC-8 and de Havilland
Comet 4 well established in service. The
airlines wished to offer the attractions of jet
service on short-haul routes as well, and
US manufacturer Douglas responded with
its DC-9 twin-engined jetliner. The type, in
all of its many variants, went on to become
the biggest selling commercial aircraft in
the history of the Douglas company, with
close to 1,000 examples serving with airlines
throughout the world. In pretty much everyrespect, the DC-9 family of jetliners were true
trailblazers.
The origins of the DC-9 can be traced
back to the late 1950s, when the Douglas
Aircraft Company applied the designation
to a projected scaled-down, short-haul,
version of its successful DC-8. By 1959
the company was looking at options that
would have been powered by a pair of wing-mounted Pratt & Whitney JT3D turbofans- rear-slung engine layouts were not being
considered at this stage.
Also known at one time as the Model
2067, this project was rejected by the
airlines, and in 1960 Douglas signed a
two-year contract with France’s Sud Aviation
for licence production and marketing in
North America of the Caravelle jetliner.
The company’s sales efforts didn’t attract
sufficient orders, and so Douglas went ‘back
to the drawing board’.
In 1962 the manufacturer announced
details of its Model 2086, a low-wing design,
DC - 9 FAMILY
SHORT-HAUL
SUCCESS STORY
Charles Woodley outlines the history of the Douglas DC-9/MD-80 jet family.
56 Aviation News incorporating Jets May 2018Air Canada operated a large eet of DC-9-
32s, as well as a small number of shorter-
fuselage DC-9-14s. Air Canada’s DC-9-32
CF-TLZ landing at Toronto on July 29, 1979.
AirTeamImages.com/Caz CaswellBritish Midland Airways’ DC-9-15 G-BMAA. The airline went on to build up a mixed eet of pre-owned -10s and -30s. AirTeamImages.com/Carl Ford56-61_dc9DC.mfDC.indd 56 04/04/2018 12:58