History: Delta Airline's 2001 Farewell to the L-1011

Today is the 40th anniversary of Delta placing the Lockheed L-1011 into service. A moment to celebrate.

Delta Airlines retired its fleet of Lockheed L-1011 after 28 years of service on July 31st 2001. The L-1011 had been the backbone of Delta's international business and many people had grown immensely attached to this beautiful aircraft. So when Delta retired the L-1011 this video was produced by Delta Airlines Video Services as a tribute the L-1011 an its long history with Delta Airlines. This farewell video is a beautiful tribute to the most amazing aircraft ever built .... enjoy!

The video above is © Delta Airlines / Delta Airlines Video Services, 2001

History: Eastern Airlines L-1011 (Ship 309 and 334)

Eastern L-1011 (C) Enid Grigg

Enid Grigg has a number of really nice shots of Easter Airlines L-1011s that she took when she worked on the L-1011 in 1979. Enid is an awesome photographer and I appreciate her allowing us to put these beautiful black and white pictures up here on the blog.

Eastern L-1011 (C) Enid Grigg

The image below gives you a pretty good idea just how spacious and L-1011 cockpit is.

Eastern L-1011 (C) Enid Grigg

 One thing that is very consistent are the stories from people who worked on, flew or maintained the L-1011: it was a truly awesome plane to fly on. The picture below shows the underfloor galley. Richard pointed out that you can see that this picture would have been taken during flight and during service because the first three meal carts on the right hand side (foreground) are facing backs out indicating that they are empty or had been used. The other carts in the back are still plugged in (coiled cord on top) to keep the meals warm. Above the carts are the galley ovens and above the ovens are the refrigerators.

Eastern L-1011 (C) Enid Grigg

Below the very spacious and elegant first class cabin in the L-1011.

Eastern L-1011 (C) Enid Grigg

Now for a few cockpit shots. The Eastern Airlines L-1011s had been configured with tapes for the engine instruments. This is a distinct difference for the L-1011s used by Delta. Delta configured the engine instruments as round instruments to keep a familiar instrumentation environment for it's Pilots. 

Eastern L-1011 (C) Enid Grigg

Eastern L-1011 (C) Enid Grigg

Eastern L-1011 (C) Enid Grigg

Another distinct feature of the Easter L-1011 is the configuration of the weather radar screens in to the main instrument panel. While placing the radar into the MIP was not uncommon, it was later configure further over the the side into the chart panel.

Eastern L-1011 (C) Enid Grigg

Eastern L-1011 (C) Enid Grigg

Images used with permission granted by Enid Grigg. 

L-1011 History: Cabin Interior Lighting

L-1011 Cabin Interior Lighting
from. Engineering Description Series, Lockheed, September 1976

Of course for the L-1011 trainer project at the National Museum of Commercial Aviation we are not going to reproduce the L-1011 cabin interior, however, I found this really neat picture of the Lockheed L-1011 interior taken from row 36 looking forward. The picture is out of a 1976 Lockheed publication series covering various design aspects of the L-1011.

The image shows one of the sample configurations of the L-1011 in a high capacity seating arrangement. It also gives a really good idea just how wide the L-1011 is with 10 seats across and and wide aisles. The configuration in the image above shows the L-1011 without center luggage bins installed ... this gives it a very roomy feel ... which in fact the L-1011 really was.  This claim for massive amounts of "headroom" was not repeated until the introduction of the Boeing 777.

For its days the L-1011 had really awesome interior lighting that used fully dimmable cold-cathode fluorescent lights, had individual reading lights and individual zone controls. 

History: L1011 Structure Images - Super Guppie

Here are a few images from the archives. The first image below is an image published by Lockheed in the early 1972 showing the massive size of the Lockheed L-1011 fuselage. The metal structure in the image is a full size mock up of the largest diameter fuselage section:

The two images below show the left wing of N1011 and shows the leading edge Slats and the trailing edge Flaps very well. And a really neat historic image of an L-1011 wing being loaded into a Super Guppie.

History: Test Flight Images

Two more images showing N1011 and N301EA during test flights. The images are part of photographs released in the 1970s by Lockheed-California. The images are not dated but are, like most of the other images I have, from the archive of Don Pierce.

The image below shows N1011 repainted to a new demo scheme with the words "Advanced TriStar" on the tail. This is the paint scheme N1011 remained in until it was scrapped in 1992. You can see N1011 in its original paint scheme here.

History: L1011 Under Floor Galley and 1st Class Cabin (Pressphoto)

One of the rather unique things about the Lockheed L-1011 was the very innovative under floor galley. As the picture below shows the galley was quite roomy, however, did not have quite as much headroom as the picture gives illusion to. The two doors in the back of the image are the two electrical elevators connecting the cabin to the underfloor galley. The image is part of an early press release deck published by Lockheed in the early 1970s. 

The first class cabin and the economy cabin was divided by a movable set of walls for easy reconfiguration. What the picture below shows is the remarkable ceiling height in the L-1011 cabin which is even more pronounced by the fact that the L-1011 pictured did not have the center luggage bins installed. 

Great picture of N301EA in a left bank showing the very clean design of the aircraft underside. 

History: N1011 Test Flight Images

Here are a few really cool shots of N1011 during test flights. The images are pictures published by Lockheed for press releases in the very early 1970s.

The image below shows Lockheed's N1011 with the still TWA painted N3001 in a little bit of L-1011 formation flying. The aircraft was later re-pained to Eastern Air Lines colors and sold to Eastern. 

Below shows N1011 chased by what appears to be N8544, however, it's hard to tell from the picture and the FAA registry for N8544 is no longer known.

They are really neat shots of N1011 and again, they are from the archive of Don Pierce. By the way, just as a piece of useless trivia, N1011 (as a FAA registration) has gone from this iconic aircraft to being registered to a Sea Ray kit plane witch was destroyed in 2000 and is currently registered to a Cessna T210N. 

History: Early Lineup N1011, N3001 and N301EA

Pictured is a line-up of the first three L-1011s produced. The picture is a Lockheed press image from Don's archive but was not dated. I would assume that it was taken in either 1971 or 72? The image was taken at Lockheed's Palmdale facility in California and it shows, from front to back, N1011, N3001 painted in TWA colors and N301EA painted in Eastern Air Lines colors. N1011, the one in the very front of the picture ended up becoming a movie prop for Disney before it was scrapped. At least portions of the cabin and the cockpit section of N1011 got rescued and are now on display as a cut-off at the Delta Air Transport Heritage Museum in Atlanta. Delta re-painted the prototype aircraft to Delta colors. I am still amazed that Lockheed did not preserve the iconic N1011 as a museums item, but I guess after Lockheed pulled out of the commercial market holding on to the commercial aircraft legacy was not that important. 

History: First Flight (Autographed Press Photo)

This picture is from the archives of Don Pierce. The photo shows the takeoff of Ship #1 on its maiden flight. The picture is signed by the four persons who were the crew on-board. Henry Baird (Hank) Dees was the pilot, Ralph (Coke) Cokeley was the copilot, Rod Bray was the Flight Test Engineer and Glenn Fisher was the Flight Engineer. Coke had also been a pilot for Boeing on the 747 during its flight test program.

There is a lot of good writing on the maiden flight here at this link Building The TriStar, however, over the years (the article is from 2003) it appears that the image links have gone bad. 

History: LTU Maintenance Fire MSN 1114 in 1991

20 years ago, in 1991, a German LTU L-1011-1 (MSN 1114) caught on fire during a routing maintenance activity. The aircraft interior ignited during carpet replacement Thursday June 27th 1991. The aircraft was actually parked inside the LTU hangar as the fire erupted but the maintenance team on site managed to push the aircraft outside prior to the arrival of the fire engines because fortunately the tug was still attached to the aircraft.  The intense heat of the interior fire caused the roof to melt and collapse. The aircraft had been in services for 16 years at the time of the fire and was previously register as N10115 with PSA in the US but then became D-AERI with LTU. 

These two images are from the archive of Don Pierce who, at the time of the fire taught a L-1011 systems class for LTU in Germany. There where minor injuries amongst members of the maintenance crew, however, as dramatic as the pictures look, lucky enough there were no fatalities and no other damage to LTU property as a result of this maintenance fire. However, MSN 1114 was as total write-off.

History: Frank Borman Test Flight (Press Image)

Don Pierce sent me a great picture from his archive. The picture is an original 8 1/2 x 11 black and white photograph released by Eastern Air Lines in French. The picture shows the NASA Astronaut and Eastern Air Lines CEO Frank Borman on the left and Lockheed L-1011 test pilot Henry Baird (Hank) Dees on the right. The picture was taken onboard the prototype L-1011 used for flight tests conducted together with Eastern and Frank Borman. 

The original caption of the picture reads:

Frank Borman, Vice-Président du Groupe Opérational d'Eastern Air lines, après avoir piloté l'impressionnant "TRISTAR" et effecuté en outre un essai concluant de "touch and go" consistante à prendre contact avec le sol, puis à redonner des gaz en bout de piste, simulant le cas d'un atterrissage "trop court", a déclaré:

"c'est un avion pour vrais pilotes, sa parfaite stabilité en vol fait présager qu'il deviendra un appareil très populaire auprès des usagers".

Aujourd'hui l'appareil est au BOURGET. L'expérience technique de Frank Borman s'est révélée concluante puisque nous avons le loisir de présenter l'appareil au milieu de toutes les autres nouveautés du Salon. 

Here is my best effort translation since I don't speak any French (per Google translate):

Frank Borman, Deputy Chairman of the Operational Group of Eastern Air Lines, after having driven the impressive "TRISTAR" and also conducting asuccessful trials of "touch and go" to make consistent contact with the ground and to restore thrust, simulating the case of landing "too short", said:

"It's a real airplane for pilots, with its perfect stability in flight I predict that it will become a very popular vehicle among users."

Today the aircraft is at Bourget. The technical experience of Frank Borman proved conclusive since we have the opportunity to present the aircraft in the middle of all the other novelties of the show.

There are some interesting details on the cockpit panel of the test aircraft (which I assume was N1011 ... however, the picture does not identify the aircraft). 

1. There is is no pitch or auto throttle panel yet, actually there are no autopilot elements all tighter. 
2. The place of the APFDS disconnect panel is taken by a clock. 
3. The APFDS Modes panel has a clock in place of the modes annunciator. 
4. There are no TGT instruments as part of the main instrument cluster. 
5. The annunciator is displaced to the right in this prototype panel and the standby instruments are replaced with a number of other unknown instrument. 
6. The pilot side main instrument panel has a number of extra instruments that did not become part of the final production version. They are hard to make out from this picture. 

The overhead panel on the test model is also missing a number of production panels in this image. For example 

1. there an unknown panel with no light plate and a few cutouts. I suspect, that the panel did not actually do anything but was placed as a placeholder and 
2. there is no Rudder Limiter and Mach Feel panel quite yet. 

History: Lockheed L-1011 Ship 3 (1003) During Flight Tests - N301EA (by Don Pierce)

This an old photo I found, scanned it on one computer and forwarded it to my new computer. The photo was taken around 1972. I [Don Pierce] am the person on the far right. The men in the dark suits in the center of the photo are, from left to right, the pilot, the FE, the co-pilot (second pilot), and my boss (team leader). The photo is of all of the various engineers involved. It does not include flight line personnel. The "301" on the on the nose is Eastern's number assignment - the FAA registry number of the plane was N301EA.

A confusing story: The second TriStar built was in TWA colors during flight test, but built as an Eastern plane, so it was repainted prior to delivery - in EAL colors and numbered N301EA. The plane on which I flew during flight Test, was renumbered N302EA prior to delivery. If you have a log of planes delivered, you will note that Ship 1002 (painted in TWA colors during flight test) was actually delivered as N301EA. The first TriStar to be delivered to TWA was Ship 1012 or 1013 (I don't remember exactly).

I used know the serial numbers for the LTU planes, since I taught them many times. Their first plane was 1033, which was basically an EAL plane with a few modifications. LTU would lease from EAL on occasion. Three of LTU's later planes were originally built for PSA, but not taken up by PSA, so LTU obtained them for a good price, after they sat on the flight line for quite a while. LTU had a mixture of -1, -200 and -500. (I still remember their "tail numbers")

"1003 while in route on 9/24/95 flying as DL157 (LAX-HNL) about 450 miles west of LAX airplane experienced sudden decompression at FL330 Airplane descended to FL140 and safely returned to LAX Due to cost of repairs Delta decided to retire the airplane which had over 52K hours and 25K cycles on its airframe at that point strd Dobbins AFB Marietta, GA used for stress evaluations by Lockheed"

The aircraft has most likely been destroyed after testing.