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What did you think of the 727? In my youth I flew a lot
as a 727 pax. There was always something reassuring
about having 3 people up front and 3 big ole engines in
the back. Engines that you could fsking feel when the
levers were pushed all the way forward. A real airplane
for passengers that love planes.

I liked it for some of the same reasons you did. The three crew thing
was great. We used pro flight engineers ( as opposed to a kid fresh out
of Embry Riddle ). It wasn't exactly a sprots car in the handling
department, but it went where you told it with a bit of persuasion
(though you would get exactly the opposite view from a guy who came onto
it off of a 707, which was supposed to be a real handful) It was very
fast. Anything up to mach .93, a bit slower if you were heavy.
Very noisy flightdeck (wind) Nicely thought out for it's day with lots
of redundancy in all systems. It must have seemed like something from
Buck Rogers in 1963.


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Bertie

Tell the story about when 727 first came out and a couple crashed
during flare (one was at SLC as I remember).

Bird was dirtiest aircraft I had seen up to that time when on final.
With everything out and down and Stews dragging their feet out of back
stair well didn't hardly look much different than a flying brick )

You can correct my remembrance. Bird started to get a bad name and
lots of quick investigations took place. It was found that if pilots
were sloppy flying the handbook airspeed on final and got just a
couple of knots slow they couldn't flare the bird. The fix was to
change the operating manual and raised approach speed 3 or so knots
(just a tweak) and bird became one of the best and safest birds
flying.

Correct me where I have remembered the details wrong.

Big John