The Giant 1990's Passenger Jet that Never Was...

Go to sheathunderwear.com/ and use the code “MEGA” to get 20% off your order! Thank you Sheath for the sponsorship!

Boeing's decision to purchase MD was their biggest mistake ever, or should I say their decision that that purchase would include many former MD executives being appointed to senior Boeing executive management positions. This resulted in a shift in emphasis within Boeing management from technical excellence, safety and quality, to the financial bottom line and shareholder value, at the expense of the former, which has subsequently resulted in several Boeing debacles, including the 737 Max debacle, the 777X debacle and the 787 Dreamliner debacle, all of which have had exactly the opposite effect on the Boeing share price. And that doesn't even include the Boeing Starliner debacle, although I am not sure if the Aerospace Division of Boeing, responsible for the Starliner, reports to the same MD studded executive management as the Aviation Division

Part of the problem for the MD12 is the same one that the A380 faces, they are so large that it not all airports can handle them. The other is that former MD execs got too much power after the purchase. Why Boeing would appoint execs of a failed company into a successful one is one of the great mysteries of the corporate world.

My uncle was an engineer at McDonnell Douglas and retired in the early 1980's. I remember him mentioning a project of making a "stretched" DC-10 that would make it a close competitor to the Boeing 747.

Simon! Love your work, Love your channels. Appreciate all the work you do. Some general feedback... The random inserted voice effects are really annoying. Not sure about anyone else but not a fan. I'm sure you're just trying new things out and just wanted to give you some honest feedback as a die hard fan and habitual watcher of your channels.

its funny how in the end the biggest threat to the 747 (and the A380) has been the big twin jets, like the 777 and the 787 as well as the european counterparts

The reason MD-12 failed I had to do the secret that Boeing knew by the 90s, which its competitors Airbus and McDonnell Douglas didn’t. Boeing knew 747 sales to their main customer, the airlines, were going down year after year. But this didn’t make sense since most of them were fielding an aging fleet of jumbo jets which would soon need new replacements of the 747. That meant either the airlines were waiting for aircraft manufacturers to come up with a revolutionary wide body plane to come out, like the MD-12. Or that meant the business of air travel was changing. From that of a hub and spoke model, of moving large numbers of passengers on large planes to big cities, like New York and LA, and then making a connecting flight to say Charlotte. Instead airlines started buying smaller planes that were cheaper to operate and offering more direct routes to smaller destinations. The secret Boeing knew was that large airplanes were no longer the future of air travel, because the business was changing and they had the sales numbers to prove it.

1:30 - Chapter 1 - Design & development 2:35 - Mid roll ads 3:55 - Back ot the video 8:00 - Chapter 2 - What might have been 10:35 - Chapter 3 - Fall of the MD12

I have a word to the audio editor: STAHP!

Great video. But please, for the love of god, stop with the weird audio distortion 😫

One of the assets McDonnell Douglas had was its ability to reconfigure military aircraft into successful civilian cargo and passenger aircraft. The C-17 Globemaster would make a great competitor for the Airbus A-400M Atlas.

It is sad to see the consolation of the aircraft and military industrial complex into the hands of just a few companies

1. When the last A380 gets parked, the ferry crew will be flown home in a 747..... 2. The 747 was not designed as a passenger aircraft. It was roughly based upon the airplane that Boeing proposed to the USAF in the 1960's as a large cargo aircraft. That plane was not selected, the rival Lockheed C-5 was picked. Boeing at the time had a request from American Airlines to produce an airplane that could carry 250 people and all their bags nonstop from New York to Los Angeles in the winter and use two engines to do it. It quickly became clear that a twin engine design wouldn't work, so Lockheed and McDonnell-Douglas submitted three engine designs. Boeing was working on the 2707 at the time, the supersonic transport and their notion was that subsonic designs would become worthless as soon as the 2707 took to the air. Thus they designed a four engine airplane with as much parts commonality with the 2707 as possible. The idea was that this big airplane could be converted into a FREIGHTER when the airlines acquired 2707's and as such would have considerable retail value. This is why the 747 has the cockpit on the upper deck; This configuration allows a nose loading door to be installed for the loading of very long items. And the fuselage was designed so that two standard Unit Load Devices could sit side by side and allow an 18 inch walkway along the outsides so that all cargo would be accessible in flight. 3. Which brings up the big problem with the 747 and the even bigger problem with the A380: They are both too big. -20 years ago I bought a plastic and metal tool at Home Depot for $30 that makes it quite easy to install a kitchen sink faucet. I have used it TWICE in those two decades. See the point? It is a tool that while a brilliant design....Has only a very specific use. The 747 and A380 are just like this tool. You have to keep these giant airplanes in the air a certain number of hours per day in order to pay it's fixed costs, which are huge. AND you need to find a large number of peope who want to go from one city to another city at a certain time of day. With a 767 it isn't hard to find 200+ people who want to go from Atlanta to Brussels or Washington Dulles to London. But try finding upwards of 400-500 people who want to do that and you find your potential pool of customers is quite a bit smaller. In fact, some airlines have parked 747's and/or A380's because they discover quite quickly that they simply cannot make money with these "tools". The 747 makes an excellent freighter because it is primarily a single deck design. The A380 won't make it as a freighter because the upper deck floor would have to have heavy reinforcement, limiting the weight that it could carry to the point where it would be about the same as the smaller 747. And the A380 would need a special tall loader to load the upper deck, something that the 747 doesn't need. Both designs are being phased out. 777's make far more efficient freighters than 747's and can carry nearly the same weight as an early 747, and there are already talks of A350 passenger to freighter conversions. Folks the days of the big four engine airplanes are NUMBERED. Great video!

Lockheed Martin also had plans for a 1000 passenger super jumbo which was to have been based on an enlarged version of the L1011 TriStar's airframe, but it didn't happen because the L-1011 ended up being a bit of a bust and the company decided to abandon passenger jets in 1991.

Really not a fan of the poor audio cut out segments

The problem with these giant airliners is most airports are not setup to service a single aircraft with multiple jetways which would be needed to deplane passengers efficiently

Can't believe after all these years, you still manage to put out so much content, it's not "free" but its free enough thanks as always to you and the team Simon.

The Sukhoi KR-860 "Wings of Russia" earlier named the SKD-717, was proposed design for a double decker wide-body superjumbo jet aircraft by Russian aerospace company Sukhoi. A 1/24th scale model was shown at the 1999 Paris Air Show.

Just want to say, my subscription feed, 4 straight Simon videos.

Vickers planned a double decker VC10 way back in the 60s!