Lufthansa Douglas DC-10-30

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The McDonnell Douglas DC-10 is an American wide-body aircraft manufactured by McDonnell Douglas. The DC-10 first flew on August 29, 1970 and was introduced to the world on August 5, 1971 by American Airlines. The DC-10, trijet, has two turbofans under the wings and a third turbofan at the base of the vertical stabilizer. The cabin’s twin-aisle layout has a typical seating for 270 passengers in two classes and the DC-10-10 had a 4,000 mile range for transcontinental flights. Early on in the DC-10’s operational life there were safety failures partially attributable to a design flaw in the original cargo doors that caused multiple incidents which included fatal accidents. McDonnell Douglas announced that production would end due to a lack of orders. As the design flaws were rectified and fleet hours were increased, the DC-10 eventually achieved a long-term safety record comparable to those of similar-era passenger jets. Production of the DC-10 ended in 1989 with a total of 386 aircraft delivered to airlines along with 60 KC-10 tankers for the military.

Deutsche Lufthansa AG, commonly shortened to Lufthansa, serves as the flag carrying airline of Germany. When combined with its subsidiaries, it stands as the second-largest airline in Europe in terms of passengers carried. Lufthansa is also one of the five founding members of Star Alliance, which is the world’s largest airline alliance, formed in 1997.

The company was founded as Luftag in 1953 by staff of the former Deutsche Luft Hansa that had been politically connected to the government of Nazi Germany and dissolved after World War II. Luftag continued the traditional branding of the German flag carrier by acquiring the Luft Hansa name and logo. The wide-body era for Lufthansa started with a Boeing 747 flight on 26 April 1970. That was followed by the introduction of the Douglas DC-10-30 on 12 November 1973.

Lufthansa conducted a pilot-crew training program for the DC-10-30 at the former Walker Air Force Base in Roswell, New Mexico in the 1970’s. During near blizzard conditions in Roswell on March 12, 1975 the Lufthansa DC-10-30, D-ADHO, was diverted to Kirtland Air Force Base in Albuquerque for the days training flight.

Below is the Lufthansa Douglas DC-10-30, D-ADHO, aircraft that trained at Roswell’s air park and diverted to Albuquerque in 1975.

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