by Robert Waldvogel

Created on: October 25, 2008

Commercial aircraft are the result of the airline requirements which shape them, attempting to fulfill, as completely and cost-effectively as possible, a particular combination of mission goals. For airliner-type aircraft, these include two primary parameters: payload, comprised of passengers, baggage, cargo, and mail, and range, which enables a carrier to offer nonstop service between specific city pairs.

Aircraft configurations are, in essence, design solutions to intended operating missions and hence vary according to fuselage length and width; wingspan, planform, and sweepback; engine type, thrust, and mounting; and horizontal and vertical tail location and size.

In the late 1970s, passenger demand had begun to eclipse the capacity of the Boeing 727, which had accommodated a maximum of 131 single-class, high-density passengers in its initial, short-fueselage -100 series and 189 in its stretched, -200 version.

Seeking to replace this venerable design on one-stop transcontinental routes with a higher-capacity tri-jet, Boeing had considered several replacements by stretching the 727-200's fuselage, remounting two of the three engines to the wing underside, and ultimately eliminating the third engine in the vertical tail. The result, a low-wing, twin-engined, single-aisle airliner based upon the performance specifications submitted by American Airlines, Delta, and United, had been designated the 757. During this time, however, passenger acceptance of widebody aircraft had been overwhelming and many carriers had sought such a cabin cross-section on medium- as well as traditionally long-range route sectors. As a result, passenger capacity per aircraft had begun to decrease, from the 500 of the quad-engined Boeing 747, to the 350 of the tri-engined Lockheed L-1011 and McDonnell-Douglas DC-10, to the 250 of the twin-engined Airbus A-300.

With the margin between the maximum capacities of the 727-200 and the Airbus A-300 beginning to converge, many airlines had expressed interest in a small widebody which could accommodate the median of the two. The result, the 767, featured greater range and wider-cabin comfort with seven-abreast, dual-aisle coach seating for about 200, becoming the first (and thus far only) commercial airliner to deviate from the standard wide body fuselage width of previous Boeing, Lockheed, McDonnell-Douglas, and Airbus aircraft. The chosen width had offered both advantages and disadvantages. Of the advantages, it had featured less fuselage cross

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