Flight 600

Let me take you back to the dim distant past and Captain Jeff’s start with his legacy airline, ACME, I mean Delta, no ACME, Delta, Acta, Delme… oh whatever. His career started, not in the Captain’s seat but somewhere in the bowels of flight deck, sitting sideways with control panels in front of him instead of windows, that stretched to the ceiling!  Jeff was an engineer on his favourite three holer, the Boeing 727. The loss rate for this iconic airliner was, unhappily, quite high.  As of 2019 the aircraft had suffered 351 major incidents of which 119 resulted in a total loss.  The loss of life resulting from these bare numbers has risen to over four thousand souls.  One addition to those sad statistics came from Flight 600.  This is the story.

The Boeing 727 Flight Deck

The 727 on its maiden flight

The famous S bend

With tail mounted engines the wings could be fitted with full span lift devices

The B727 was the first first airliner to have an APU

The 727 had rear mounted stairs that were used by the nefarious DB Cooper

Which resulted in the fitting of a Cooper Vane

The mechanics of a microburst

Our Captain Jeff

Images under Creative Commons licence with thanks to Felix Goetting, Alex Beltyukov, Boeing, Tank67, Daderot, Juras14, Aero Icarus and NASA.