Description

French text and captions.
The Douglas (then McDonnell Douglas) DC-10 represented the American manufacturer’s wide-body offering , already a notch below Boeing and its B-747, which would become the standard for international airlines. While it outstripped its direct competitor, the Lockheed 1011 Tristar, largely shunned outside the United States and Great Britain, the DC-10, plagued by high-profile accidents, was rarely the major long-haul aircraft for major airlines. Air France, to take just one example, clearly did not want it (even though
its partners in the ATLAS group reasonably ordered DC-10s). On the other hand, with UTA as leader, many French airlines used the large trijet, freed from its teething troubles. Some made it the backbone of their network. Many aircraft thus flew for our airlines (and even for Air France), whether registered or chartered. French DC-10s were also operated for the benefit of foreign companies.

This monograph brings together all the links between the aircraft and its user companies in France. It is the work of Jacques Julien, a great connoisseur of
French and African merchant aviation. His name is associated with that of Jacques Guillem because the latter, invested in the project from the beginning, had passed on his knowledge and a large part of the iconographic sources before his premature death.
This work is the sum of the eleven articles published by the authors between May 2021 and May 2023 (issues 317 to 329) in the pages of Trait d’Union, an internal journal of the French Branch of Air-Britain (www.bfab-tu.fr). It also includes summary tables and indexes that have not been published before.