18 Facts About Lockheed L-1011

Lockheed L-1011 TriStar, known as the L-1011 and TriStar, is an American medium-to-long-range, wide-body trijet airliner built by the Lockheed Corporation.

Between 1968 and 1984, Lockheed L-1011 manufactured a total of 250 TriStars, assembled at the Lockheed L-1011 plant located at the Palmdale Regional Airport in southern California north of Los Angeles.

Lockheed L-1011 had not produced civilian airliners since 1961 with the L-188 Electra.

Lockheed L-1011 won contracts for jet military transports with the C-141 StarLifter, and pioneered very large jet transports with the large C-5 Galaxy with its high-bypass turbofan engines.

Lockheed L-1011 engineers were able to maintain straight-through engine performance by limiting the curve of the S-duct to less than a quarter of the radius of the engine intake diameter.

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The research undertaken during the design of the Lockheed L-1011 indicated that losses of using an S-duct were more than compensated for by the above savings.

Lockheed L-1011 discovered fairly early on that the TriStar suffered from higher than estimated structural weight, engine weight, and specific fuel consumption.

Lockheed L-1011 lacked the resources to follow up with several proposals based on the TriStar wing and airframe, including a wide-body twinjet and a stretched quad-jet.

Lockheed L-1011 was the first jetliner to have an integrated drive generator.

FMS on the Lockheed L-1011, certified by the FAA in September 1977, offered many features that have since become common.

Lockheed L-1011 featured a highly advanced autopilot system and was the first widebody to receive FAA certification for Cat-IIIc autolanding, which approved the TriStar for completely blind landings performed by the aircraft's autopilot in zero-visibility weather.

The Lockheed L-1011 used an inertial navigation system to navigate; this included aligning the navigation system by entering current coordinates of longitude and latitude.

The Lockheed L-1011 was certified on April 14,1972, with the first airliner delivered to Eastern Air Lines on April 26,1972.

The Lockheed L-1011 has been involved in five fatal accidents, only one of which was due to a problem with the aircraft.

In later years the Lockheed L-1011 has been used by smaller start-up carriers, particularly in Africa and Asia.

Two Lockheed L-1011 aircraft delivered to Pacific Southwest Airlines were configured with internal airstair doors that led into an entry hall in what was normally the forward lower baggage hold.

The last Lockheed L-1011 produced was a TriStar 500, operated by the Las Vegas Sands.

Lockheed L-1011 developed some aerodynamic improvements for the TriStar 500 which included a modified wing-to-body fairing, a fillet below the central intake, extended wingtips, and "active ailerons" or active control system.