FINAL CALL FOR BRITISH AIRWAYS BOEING 737s

摘要

By the mid-1970s, early-build Hawker Siddeley Trident 1s were coming up to retirement age and a new airliner was needed. British European Airways (BEA) merged with British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) on March 31, 1974 and the newly-formed British Airways began evaluating types - the effort focusing on the Boeing 737-200 and the Douglas DC-9. The latter was a twin-engined T-tail design that first entered service with Delta Air Lines on December 8, 1965. The -30 variant had accommodation for 127 passengers in a five-abreast single-class configuration and was powered by Pratt & Whitney JT8D engines over distances of up to 1,790 miles (2,880km). British Airways leased a series of DC-9-40s (a slightly stretched subtype broadly identical to the -30) from Rnnair and ran them on its flight 'BA772/773' to Helsinki and back during 1977 to gain technical expertise of the type.