On August 5, 1971, American Airlines introduced the DC-10 with a round-trip commercial flight between Los Angeles and Chicago. Production of the DC-10 continued until 1989 while use of the DC-10 for passenger service ended in 2014.
The inaugural commercial flight of the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 marked the dawn of the wide-body, tri-jet era designed to make luxury long-haul air travel accessible to the general public. Featuring an innovative, striking engine mounted directly inside the vertical tail fin, the aircraft was built to fly high-density routes out of shorter municipal runways that couldn’t handle the massive footprint of a Boeing 747. Despite a series of tragic, highly publicized design flaws with its cargo doors that plagued its early years, engineering fixes allowed the durable aircraft to become a reliable, beloved workhorse of global aviation for over four decades, serving as the structural backbone for transatlantic holiday travel and global cargo shipping.
