WI: McDonnell Douglas and Lockheed Become as Large as Boeing and Airbus?

What does it take for these two aircraft makers to become major aircraft makers today? Will they also go for the two-engine widebody market as well? Will trijets be more popular today? :)


DC10_JAL8533m.jpg

JAL DC-10

Lockheed_1011-150_AirTransat_Manchester_1995.jpg


L-1011 of Air Transat
 
If I recall correctly the DC-9 was involved in a large number of high profile crashes. fixing those would do a fair amount to help the McDonnell Douglas name. As for Lockheed, they make a lot of money on defense and most of their focus is on highly advanced research (The Skunk works being one of the most famous such programs in the world), anything commercial is a much lower priority and might be a distraction, so you might have to get rid of the cold war for that.
 
You are correct in stating that Lockheed always competed for the top
shelf. Their model 10 and Electra were among the first monoque airliners, but as soon as Beechcraft, Barkely-Grow started competing, Lockheed moved on to building Hudsons and Lodestars. TWA was forced to fly piston-pounding Lockheeds over the Rocky Mountains because none of Lockheed's competitors could maintain altitude (15,000 feet MSL) on a single engine.
Lockheed also led the market with Constellations: "the best 3-engine airplane flying the North Atlantic."
Hah!
Hah!
That bit of humour is more indicative of Lockheed's willingness to fly on the bleeding edge of technology, which they continued with their 4-turboprop Electra.

Hang a larger wing on the Lockheed L-1011 Tristar. Lockheed engineers under-estimated the weight of fuel customers wanted to carry, over longer distances. Mind you, 3-engined airliners (Fokker Tri-Motor, Boeing 727, Lockheed L-1011 and MD-10) we're only stepping stones in the evolution of more reliable engines and more automated cockpits that only needed 2 crew.

Meanwhile Douglas built a long series of utilitarian airliners might not have flown as fast, but had ruggedly consistent dispatch reliability. Later versions of DC-7 competed directly with Connie's.

Meanwhile McDonnell specialized on the military market. As the Cold War wound down, military sales slumped.

I would love to hear more of the inside stories of how Stonecipher wound down MD, then shifted to lead Boeing??????
 
Lockheed isn't as large as Boeing and Airbus? That's news to me. Sure, they're not in the airliner market anymore, but they're the king of the military aircraft market - the proverbial elephant in the room. In addition, they do all kinds of other military and civilian projects in and out of aerospace applications. Lockheed is more now a general advanced technology company with military applications as the primary focus. Their aircraft production is just a rather large cog in a massive machine that takes 7.1% of all of the Pentagon funds paid out.

Now, MD being a competitor would be quite interesting - they did have some very interesting ideas.
 
Well, the DC-10 needs to avoid its crappy reputation that it got (being unsafe), and the oil crisis needs to be avoided somehow, as that made trijets less popular due to their high gas usage compared to twinjets...though I don't know how that could be done...

Barring that, I think if either Lockheed/McDonnell Douglas developed twinjets instead of trijets as OTL, they could have strangled Airbus in the cradle, which could lead to the ultimate destruction of the European aerospace industry, as these countries alone lack the resources to form a major airplane manufacturer that could compete against the dominant player, the US.
Instead, they would end up like the Japanese-subcontractors, rather than making planes of their own (mostly).
 
Ok, I really did not define the terms here. This thread was about the commercial side of aviation... My apologies :eek:

I recall there was this project my McDonnell-Douglas. It was called the MD-12, more like the lite version of the A380... could this have happened?
 
Thinking outside the box here... how about the Lockheed CL-321 air tanker, which actually won the competition for the SAC jet tanker role filled by the Boeing 717, gets the bulk of USAF orders? The KC-135 was meant to be a stopgap whilst the Lockheed aircraft (which would probably have been K-1) was prepared for production. Assume this plan goes ahead. You then have 250 KC-135s and 550 K-1s, or thereabouts.

With the economies of scale from the USAF order, Lockheed's Constellation II - a commercial version of the CL-321 - is a very strong contender against the Boeing 707 and the Douglas DC-8. All three companies come up with short-range airliners to complement their long-range jets - Boeing with the 727 and 737, Douglas with the DC-9, and Lockheed with... something.

Later in the 1960s, the three four-jet airliners are more or less level pegging - the USAF orders for the Lockheed offering economies of scale that partly offset its' larger size and greater cost. Boeing's CX-HLS bid is successful, leading to the C-5 Stratolifter, whilst Lockheed's simple, low-risk L-2000 supersonic airliner gets the nod. Looking for a competitive advantage, Juan Trippe turns to Douglas - long their favoured supplier - to build a large airliner, capable of carrying freight should the supersonic transport turn out to be the expected titanic shift in air travel. Boeing and Lockheed rush to develop their own widebody airliners to compete, Boeing producing the widebody 747 trijet, whilst Lockheed produces the four-engined Galaxy, smaller than the big Douglas but with a longer range and cheaper to run.

That gives you Boeing taken down a peg whilst Lockheed and Douglas are playing in the big leagues, just as Airbus is entering the scene.
 
delay ETOPS meaning the tri-jets are a more economical alternative to 4 engine aircraft but the 'super twins' are hobbled by no ETOPS.
 
Is the international airliner market large enough for four players? Since the number of potential sales is unlikely to change dramatically even with these companies surviving that would mean Boeing and Airbus having to shrink to half of what they currently are to accommodate McDonnell Douglas and Lockheed as equal sized competitors. Would companies this small still be economically viable?
 

Anderman

Donor
Is the international airliner market large enough for four players? Since the number of potential sales is unlikely to change dramatically even with these companies surviving that would mean Boeing and Airbus having to shrink to half of what they currently are to accommodate McDonnell Douglas and Lockheed as equal sized competitors. Would companies this small still be economically viable?
Embraer's alive and well, and is a lot smaller than either of those companies, so I'd day yes.

One question I have, would it be possible to civilianise more military transports? I know the L-100 is the civilian version of the C-130, but would it be possible to get a civilian version of the C-5 say up and running, and what mights its job be?
 
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Embraer's alive and well, and is a lot smaller than either of those companies, so I'd day yes.

One question I have, would it be possible to civilianise more military transports? I know the L-100 is the civilian version of the C-130, but would it be possible to get a civilian version of the C-5 say up and running, and what mights its job be?

boeing competed in the C-5 contest and lost - and turned the plane into the 747. so maybe ittl boeing wins, and lockheed turns their plane into a civilian, and get the success that boeing otl had with the 747
 
This doesn't really satisfy the criteria of *BOTH* being as big, but Lockheed might actually have been in a good position to remain in the commercial aviation business if not for the DC-10.

The market simply wasn't big enough for both the L1011 and the DC-10. The DC-10 would likely have been cancelled if not for a pivotal order by American Airlines. Had Lockheed instead authorized additional engine suppliers instead of just Rolls Royce, AA would likely have opted for the L1011, killing the DC-10.

With L1011 as the only trijet on the market, and without the issues caused by RR's bankruptcy, it ends up dominating that market. Lockheed would then be well-placed to enter the twinjet market and eventually move downward into the single-aisle space.

Now, the Europeans are still going to be pouring subsidies into Airbus. The question is whether Airbus can still emerge as a major player or remains a niche actor. It's an open question as to whether the commercial aviation market can support *three* major commercial aircraft manufacturers, but it possibly might, especially given that Lockheed would have an extensive military side business to buttress their commercial aviation business.
 
I think Airbus is kind of inevitable, I just can't see the EU acquiescing to just buying American airliners when they could produce them themselves.
 
I think Airbus is kind of inevitable, I just can't see the EU acquiescing to just buying American airliners when they could produce them themselves.

And if you have an Airbus your probably going to see a 'rationalization' of the US producers. You might have Lockheed or McDonnell Douglas becoming the winner in that scenario rather than Boeing but I don't think you can have all three.
 
I think Airbus is kind of inevitable, I just can't see the EU acquiescing to just buying American airliners when they could produce them themselves.

Well, Japan can produce themselves too theoretically, but they mostly don't due to special deals with Boeing (buy Boeing planes in exchange for subcontracting work out to them).
 
Exactly, Japan has a special deal, Europe not so much, and besides Europe isn't so closely associated with the US, and is a lot bigger, and had a comparable native industry to the US.
 
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