Video of Donald Douglas Snr at the Lufthansa DC-10 handover

Donald Douglas Snr, then retired as Honorary Chairman of McDonnell Douglas, came out of retirement in 1973, to give a speech at the handover of four DC-10-30s to Lufthansa. Douglas had been trying to sell aircraft to Lufthansa for decades but to no avail. After WW11 the German flag carrier wanted DC-6s but didn't have USD to buy them but Lockheed would accept DMs so the carrier opted for the Connie. In the jet age, Lufthansa became a faithful Boeing customer rejecting first the DC-8 and then the DC-9. However, Lufthansa did maintenance work on SAS's DC-9s and was very impressed with the build and reliability so opted for the DC-10-30 in 1970. In a twist, Lufthansa would become a faithful customer of the DC-10 and its successor operating no less than 32 DC-10s and MD11s as passenger or freighter aircraft. It would take delivery of the last MD11. SEE the podcast: Flight Safety Detectives dissect the Netflix doco “Downfall”. READ: Boeing will bounce back says world’s largest leasing company READ: Ukraine’s President wants to build another AN-225 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2-qUhD6UwTs About AirlineRatings.com Airlineratings.com was developed to provide everyone in the world a one-stop shop for everything related to airlines, formed by a team of aviation editors, who have forensically researched nearly every airline in the world. Our rating system is rated from one to seven stars on safety – with seven being the highest ranking. Within each airline, you will find the country of origin, airline code, booking URL and seat map information. The rating system takes into account a number of different factors related to audits from aviation’s governing bodies, lead associations, as well as the airlines, own safety data. Every airline has a safety rating breakdown so you can see exactly how they rate. Over 230 of the airlines on the site that carry 99 per cent of the world’s passengers have a product rating. Given that low cost, regional and full-service carriers are so different we have constructed a different rating system for each which can be found within each airline.