McDonnell Douglas, once an aircraft manufacturing giant of the mid to late 20th century, was willing to take shortcuts for the sake of profit if it meant they could beat the competition in the commercial aviation market. However, the company’s greed ended up costing them millions of dollars in reparations and the reputation of their newest plane, the DC-10. Eventually, the company itself was bought out by Boeing just before the turn of the 21st century. The DC-10 accidents that happened over the course of the plane’s 20 year service life conveyed the important message to the world of aircraft manufacturers that cutting corners for profit will eventually cost you more than what you paid for. 

Competing alongside its biggest rival Boeing, the two companies redefined air travel by bringing the U.S., and the world into the jet age of the 1960s and 1970s. The pioneering innovation in the Boeing 707 and the Douglas DC-8 made flying more luxurious and eventually more affordable than ever before. However, the release of the Boeing 747 posed a significant challenge to McDonnell Douglas to create its own wide-body jet. The subsequent development and release of the DC-10 would be one of the most infamous and controversial periods in the history of commercial aviation that would eventually reveal the desperate measures McDonnell Douglas took to make sure their aircraft hit the market as soon as possible.

Building the DC-10 came with several challenges. Firstly, the aircraft would need to be designed around existing restrictions put in place by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The most notable of these was the 60 minute rule, which prohibited twin-engine jets from flying further than 60 minutes from the nearest airport in the event of an emergency. This led developers at McDonnell Douglas to make the DC-10 a trijet, with one engine under each wing and a third on the tail above the rear end of the fuselage. Unfortunately, this trijet concept was also being used by rival manufacturer Lockheed and its development of the L-1011 Tristar. This put increased pressure on McDonnell Douglas to increase the speed of the development of the DC-10 to have it released to the market before Lockheed’s aircraft. 

Every aircraft must go through a series of safety tests before it can be sold, to make sure the aircraft has good structural integrity and no potentially fatal design flaws. McDonnell Douglas conducted such tests on the DC-10, and found that the rear cargo door was susceptible to blowing off the plane in flight and causing an explosive decompression. In addition, the door could destroy the aircraft’s vital electronic systems, rendering inputs from the cockpit useless. This was caused by the cargo door’s faulty locking pins, which secured it to the aircraft fuselage, not properly aligning, thus insufficiently holding the door in place. However, in a rush to get the DC-10 in the hands of airlines as soon as possible, McDonnell Douglas intentionally ignored this flaw and unveiled the aircraft as it was to the world on Aug. 29, 1970. 

For the first two years of its service life, the DC-10 sold well, with McDonnell Douglas’ biggest customer being American Airlines, which ordered a grand total of 66 “Luxury Liners”. The plane also sold fairly well internationally. However, on Jun. 12, 1972, American Airlines Flight 96 suffered a sudden explosive decompression in the skies over Ontario, after one of its rear cargo doors blew out. It was determined through investigation that the door’s locking pins had failed to catch due to the door being forcefully shut. Though the FAA recommended to McDonnell Douglas to make design changes, it did not require the company to ground all DC-10s until a sufficient change was put into place, known as an Airworthiness Directive.

Instead, a gentlemen’s agreement allowed McDonnell Douglas to negotiate its way out of an order that would’ve damaged the company and the new plane’s reputation. This would prove to be a costly decision; just two years later on Mar. 3, 1974, Turkish Airlines Flight 981 crashed in the Ermenonville Forest outside of Paris, killing  346 passengers and crew. Similar to the American Airlines incident, the Turkish Airlines DC-10 had suffered from the rear cargo door blowing off the plane and causing an explosive decompression. 

Despite this, there were critical differences between the two events; though the American Airlines jet suffered from many of the critical functions being ripped apart, there were just enough systems left intact that allowed Captain Bryce McCormick to land the crippled plane at Detroit airport, saving the lives of everyone on board. This was sheer luck; for the crew of the Turkish Airlines jet, the door severed the wiring for all the critical systems of the plane, meaning that the pilot and first officer could not steer or straighten out the plane. The fate of all the lives on board were sealed the moment the door came off. The crash of Turkish Airlines Flight 981 remains the single worst aviation disaster without survivors, and the worst aviation disaster in France’s history. McDonnell Douglas received its comeuppance after previously refusing to make an expensive but vital change to the DC-10’s design.

Following the Turkish Airlines crash, the investigation, largely led by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined that the design flaw that brought the plane down was not only recognized by McDonnell Douglas during testing, but it was known even during the plane’s development. F.D. Applegate, one of the head engineers at Convair, who designed the cargo door, wrote a memorandum to McDonnell Douglas, saying that the exact incidents that eventually occurred for both the American Airlines and Turkish Airlines jets was likely to happen. 

However, McDonnell Douglas, hoping to save time and money, ignored this warning. After the incident over Ontario, the company put a small peephole on the door for baggage handlers to check if the door was shut properly, and put a notice on the door warning that it must be shut properly. However, both of these measures were flawed in themselves. Many baggage handlers didn’t know what the peephole was for, nor did they understand English or the other languages that the warning was written in.

The Ermenonville disaster led the FAA to finally issue an Airworthiness Directive to McDonnell Douglas to change the DC-10’s cargo door, and it worked. Not a single DC-10 would suffer an explosive decompression ever again. However, the incident severely affected McDonnell Douglas’ chances of selling more planes. Later accidents also dissuaded passengers from flying on the DC-10 as well; in 1979, American Airlines Flight 191 had its left engine ripped off during takeoff and smashed into the wing, taking out vital electronic wiring. Combined with improper pilot training, the plane would crash just outside of Chicago O’Hare Airport, killing 273 people. A Western Airlines flight claimed 72 more lives later that year. And in 1998, Swissair Flight 111, though involving a later development of the DC-10 known as the MD-11, crashed near Peggy’s Cove in Nova Scotia due to the plane’s insulation igniting. This started a fire that caused the pilots to lose all their instruments, eventually claiming the lives of 229 passengers and crew as the plane fell from the sky in the dark of the Canadian night. Today, McDonnell Douglas is no more, as the company was merged with Boeing in 1997. 

McDonnell Douglas had to have their reputation tarnished before they recognized the need to make the DC-10 a safer aircraft. However, the various accidents involving the aircraft ultimately helped make commercial aviation safer, as it forced airlines and aircraft manufacturers alike to put passenger and crew safety at the top of the priority list, which meant more frequent maintenance and inspections under heavier scrutiny from FAA administrators. It also meant a more meticulous development of later generation aircraft. Though its service life was far from perfect, the DC-10 continues to be a workhorse in the commercial aviation industry. Despite its final passenger flight in February 2014, the plane continues to be flown by freighter companies such as FedEx, and used as an aerial refueler by the U.S. military.

Through the work of the NTSB in revealing both manufacturing and airline maintenance flaws, the era of the DC-10 provided invaluable lessons for the world of commercial aviation to make safer choices in the producing and maintaining of aircraft, and discouraging airlines from taking cost-cutting measures at the risk of human lives. The investigations conducted on McDonnell Douglas have also contributed to more efficient investigations into flaws of modern aircraft that have been the subject of air crashes, notably the Boeing 747 and 737 Max. Potential aircraft design flaws are now one of the first factors taken into consideration when investigating an aviation accident, irrespective of the aircraft’s safety history. Now, thanks to the era of the 1970s that made air travel for the masses possible, an era that the DC-10 helped pioneer, commercial aviation is now cheaper and safer than ever before.

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