Product Description

Presents a family of airliners serving with over 40 airlines around the globe. Many of the MD-80 and MD-90 variants will continue well into the 21st century. Each of the "Airliners" series includes a full technical specification, production listing, and details of all models and variants.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #794750 in Books
• Published on: 1999-05-14
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 128 pages

Customer Reviews

Pearcy's last book --- deep into Long Beach
This book became long-line aviation writer and Briton Arthur Pearcy's (1926-1998) last book, completed by others after his death. It tells the story of the U.S-built MD-80 jet airliner, which has been a workhorse above all in American domestic travel, but also in in regions and countries like Scandinavia, China, Italy or Mexico.

Pearcy's approach takes him deep into manufacturer McDonnell-Douglas' history of airplane design and production. After all, Pearcy's greatest expertise was in the field of the company's absolute success, the DC-3 (a.k.a C-47 Dakota) veteran, a plane he flew for the U.S Air Force in the aftermath of WWII.

Much of Pearcy's story about the MD-80 smells of Long Beach. That is the production plant in California where so many novel Douglas aircraft saw daylight. It was also there the successful DC-9 design from the mid-60's was streched and streched again for the airline markets, until the last design carried more than double the payload than the first.

Pearcy's book contains a lot of details on prototypes that never went into production, such as the DC-9-60 or the MD-93V. It also tells the story of how the MD-90 derivative was tailored for U.S operator Delta Air Lines, only to produce an aircraft too good for its time, and finally, at bottom line went into the books as a flop.

The book, however, has the weakness of being a typical British "anorak people" book, perhaps too meticulously digging into registrations, fuselage numbers and the fine web of obscure airlines, all that drives the plane-spotter community with their binoculars and notebooks to the perimeter fences of so many airports. On the other hand, the book presents excellent aviation photography, though it sometimes also may be boring to the less initiated reader to see the same 45-meter tube on various take-offs in various colours.

Pearcy's book also gives surprisingly little information on what kind of aircraft the MD-80 was to fly and operate, for instance from a pilot's point of view. Many interesting political connections around the aircraft are also lost. Ronald Reagan earned political capital by allowing the plane to fly with only two pilots. There was the CATIC affair when it was alleged that the Chinese built fighters with U.S. tools they had got for license-building MD-80's. There was Bill Clinton and his successful sale of the world's largest fleet of MD-90 to Saudi Arabia, where the plane was unsuitable. Nothing of this is to be read in this book.

It's, however, incredible that books in general can be dedicated in this depth to such limited issues as one aircraft type. Even after my remarks above, I can only conclude that by putting this book together, Arthur Pearcy, living to be 72 years old, produced best MD-80 book available today.