The British Caledonian’s DC-10s

The McDonnell Douglas DC-10 has found many airlines interested on the airplane (even more than the Lockheed’s L-1011 TriStar). British Caledonian is one of them.

O530 Carris PT
Jul 28, 2017 · 4 min read
British Caledonian McDonnell Douglas DC-10 G-BHDJ at Faro Airport, in 1986 — Photo source: Pedro Aragão / Wikimedia Commons

The McDonnell Douglas DC-10, despite not being a airplane with a nice safety record (thus the reason of the nickname “Death Cruiser 10”), thanks to design flaws (like the cargo door one), maintenance errors & other kinds of error which caused many accidents, has also being praised for its good economy (for the time which the airplane was launched), it’s cargo capacity (some DC-10s are still flying today as freighters), or its characteristic tail design (although less safer than the one of the Lockheed L-1011 TriStar). In fact, 386 of those airplanes were ordered by the airlines, more than the 250 TriStars which were ordered. British Caledonian is one of them.

For many years, British Caledonian have searched for a wide-body airplane which was capable to replace the Boeing 707 jetliner. They considered both the Boeing 747–100 / 747–200 Jumbo Jet, the McDonnell Douglas DC-10–10 / DC-10-30 and the Lockheed L-1011–250 / L-1011–500 TriStar, the latter two being trijets and the former being a quad-jet. In 1976, British Caledonian chose the DC-10 above the other airplanes, placing a order for 10 DC-10 Series 30 airplanes — with General Electric CF6–50C engines and intercontinental range capability of 10,000 km — and three DC-10 Series 10 airplanes — with lower thrust General Electric CF6–6 engines, which were used to intra-Europe flights and charters because of the lack of range — those destinated for BCA Charter / CalAir’s fleet. In fact, those were the only European companies to operate the Series 10 of the DC-10.

The delivery of those airplanes started in 1977, with the introduction in revenue service occurring in 20th March 1977. They operated not only inside BCal’s network, but also operated charter services from Europe to the Caribbean countries. Those DC-10 airplanes were sometimes in competition with the British Airways widebodies in their operational services (notabily their Lockheed L-1011 TriStars) much because they offered a higher flexibility than the BA’s TriStars or even their Boeing 747s! BCal had always a Scottish touch, thus their flight attendants weared Scottish kilts & their DC-10 airplanes were named after proeminent Scottish personalities (or personalities with Scottish ancestry, like James Smith McDonnell, the Scottish American aviation pioneer). They flied in British Caledonian until the year of 1988, when British Airways absorbed British Caledonian and their operations in London’s Gatwick Airport. Their DC-10 fleet was one of the biggest in Europe, including their DC-10–10s for BCA Charter. Eight of the DC-10–30s were purchased directly from McDonnell Douglas, plus two were originated from other airlines. The DC-10–10s were purchased also directly from McDonnell Douglas.

At one point, British Caledonian operated both the Boeing 747–200B, the McDonnell Douglas DC-10 Series 10 and 30, and the narrowbody BAC One-Eleven. British Caledonian was also one of the first airlines to order the MD-11 (they were the launch customer, indeed), the evolution of the DC-10 airplane, but British Airways cancelled the order after the takeover of British Caledonian & decided to purchase the main competitor — the Boeing 777 — instead (they also participated on the design & manufacturing process of the airplane, as I’ve explained on a series of articles about the history of the Boeing 777 airliner).

However, some of the DC-10s were retained by British Airways for their operations in Gatwick Airport, despite BA’s consideration to retire them totally, until 2001, when they were retired. Some of them were also sold to other airlines, including Continental Airlines (now part of United Airlines), which used them to replace bigger Boeing 747s which were considered as unecessary in the airline in the late-1980s. Others, either after being retired from BCal after the merger, or after its retirement from British Airways, were converted to freighters, which were (or still are) operated by cargo airlines, like FedEx Express, Centurion Air Cargo, Omni Air International and VarigLog. FedEx Express converted two of them — Two DC-10–10 — into MD-10 airplanes, a variation of the DC-10 with a automated glass cockpit and a two-pilot cockpit flight crew like the MD-11, which were converted (both of them) by Boeing (the company which merged with McDonnell Douglas in August 1, 1997).

Unfortunately, one of those airplanes, the MSN 48277/354, a McDonnell Douglas DC-10–30 (registered N189AX, a converted freighter operated by Centurion Air Cargo & formerly BCal’s G-DCIO), was involved in a accident in 2004, which hit a pot hole in the runway & overran it, thus arriving to the field with substantial damage to the underside of the fuselage of the airplane. The number 1 and 3 engines had broken loose of the fuselage and the wings. The airplane was written off due to the damage being beyond any possible economical repair.

The DC-10s in British Caledonian were in fact a staplemate of the airline from the first year of their operation inside the airline, until even after the merger of BCal with British Airways, when they were retired. Some of them were in operation a bit longer, much because of the fact that they were converted into freighters, thus making them more useful than the predicted by the airplane manufacturers. Sadly, most of them are now already retired from service, with some of them being already scrapped, as of 2017.


That’s what I’ve to say in this article about the history of one of the unique fleets of DC-10: The British Caledonian DC-10s — Please follow me on Twitter (@O530CarrisPT is my username). I’m also a aviation enthusiast!

O530 Carris PT

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Millennial, Chair & CEO, O530 Carris PT Metropolitan Corp (O5CPTMC): CortanaBus, United 81, O530IS, O530AS, O530HPS

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