Originally Posted by
chazbird
I jump-seated on some of those TWA 76's too. There was plenty of room to lay out and nap back there, or, install a self leveling pool table.
The DC10 had good views and was wide (the 747 never comes close to cockpit comfort/views) but riding transcon on a nice day in the L1011 was just splendid.
Thinking of it, I can't remember a systems/airframe issue on the L1011 that led to or was attributable to an accident. There's the DFW micro-burst & the Saudi cabin fire due to a on-board cook stove and landing pressurized, but really, I can't come up with anything else. Wait, there's the JFK RTO with false shaker activation, maybe that counts? Certainly no catastrophic systems/airframe/control failures?
TWA almost lost two for a systems type failure. One was a J Duct overheat they couldn't control and they just made it on the ground at SFO before a likely fatal fire broke out.
Another was an improper fuel line fitting (counterfeit part I believe) that caused an uncontained fuel leak on the No. 1 engine pylon. This was midway between LAX and HNL. They diverted to Hilo and landed with very little fuel remaining. I recall this one partially crew error. Had they pulled the fire pull early on (which they eventually did) they would have stopped the leak before they lost a whole lot of fuel. The leak was between the fire fuel shut off and the normal engine fuel shut off valves.
Oh, and early in the life of the fleet a flight westbound was down to minimum flight control hydraulics over ALS as I recall and diverted into LAS instead of going to LAX. D system only remaining if I recall the flight control systems correctly.