Dassault Mercure
| Dassault Mercure | |
|---|---|
 Air Inter Dassault Mercure at Basel Airport |
|
| Type: | Twin - engine narrow-body aircraft |
| Design country: | |
| Manufacturer: | |
| First flight: |
May 25, 1971 |
| Commissioning: |
June 14, 1974 |
| Production time: |
1971 to 1975 |
| Number of pieces: |
11 |
The Mercure was a passenger aircraft from the French manufacturer Dassault Aviation . Planning began in the mid- 1960s and the first flight took place on May 28, 1971. The last machine was taken out of service in 1995.
description
The Mercure was a joint project between Dassault Aviation and Fiat (Italy), CASA (Spain), ADAP (Belgium), FW (Switzerland) and Canadair (Canada). The cooperation was organized in a similar way to that of Airbus, which was founded almost at the same time . Apart from the partners mentioned, Dassault himself bore 14% and the French government 45% of the development costs. The final assembly took place at Dassault in the specially built factory hangars in Istres , southern France. The overall design of the Mercure is reminiscent of the Boeing 737 , which had its maiden flight in April 1967. Compared to the B737, the Mercure had a 5 cm wider hull diameter and was slightly longer. The passenger capacity was also higher at around 150. However, primarily due to the use and the same arrangement of the two Pratt & Whitney JT8D- 11 turbofan engines in both types, the visual appearance of the Mercure and the first B737 versions is almost the same. A total of only 10 machines and one prototype were built, all of which were delivered to Air Inter (the prototype was also subsequently converted and used as a passenger plane at Air Inter's request). Further versions - in particular one with a considerably longer range thanks to more economical CFM-56 engines and an enlarged version "Mercure 200" for 186 passengers - were planned, but due to a lack of interest from the airlines, a new prototype was not even produced. So even more of the Concorde were built.
The reason for the airlines' lack of interest was on the one hand that Dassault did not clarify customer needs thoroughly enough. This happened because Dassault had a strong military background as a successful manufacturer of fighter jets ( Mirage for example). The Dassault Mercure's mistake was that commercial aircraft - unlike military aircraft - are not always refueled after each landing. The Dassault engineers who created the Mercure's requirement profile during the late 1960s-early 1970s later admitted they hadn't considered this point. The Mercure was designed as a pure short-haul aircraft with a range of only around 1000 km (756 km with full payload). A short time later, the use of the more powerful Pratt & Whitney JT8D-15 engines increased the maximum take-off mass, which made it possible to carry more fuel. The range increased to 1500 km, it was almost half the range of the Boeing 737. Because the Mercure had a larger maximum take-off weight than the first 737 versions, flew a little faster and could transport more passengers (135-156) , the insufficient range was not necessarily the decisive reason for the low success. Rather, the failed global marketing is mainly due to the fact that the oil crisis and the unfavorable dollar exchange rate at that time made the Mercure more expensive for export. In mid-1973, Air France's decision not to buy the Mercure, as well as the Belgian Sabena's decision to buy the Boeing 727, contributed to the failure of the Mercure. Ultimately, the Douglas DC-9 and Boeing 737, which are designed for short and medium-haul routes, were the more suitable choices for airlines, and production had to be stopped as early as December 1975.
Air Inter, which was the only airline to use the Mercure and was very satisfied with it, flew - with a few exceptions exclusively on domestic routes - over 360,000 flight hours and 44 million passengers with this aircraft in 21 years, with not a single serious incident or operational readiness shone by 98%. It was only on April 29, 1995 that Air Inter retired the last Mercure aircraft. This machine with the registration F-BTTB was given to the Technik-Museum Speyer as an exhibit. Further copies withdrawn from Air Inter are in the Musée de l'air et de l'espace at Le Bourget Airport near Paris (F-BTTD) and on the premises of the École supérieure des métiers de l'aéronautique in Mauguio in the Near Montpellier (F-BTTE).
Technical specifications
| Parameter | Data |
|---|---|
| crew | Captain, copilot and flight engineer |
| Passengers | 150 |
| length | 34.84 m |
| span | 30.55 m |
| Wing area | 116 m² |
| Wing extension | 8.05 |
| Wing loading |
|
| height | 11.35 m |
| Empty mass | 31,800 kg |
| Max. Takeoff mass | 56,500 kg |
| Top speed | 925 km / h |
| Cruising speed | 870 km / h |
| Service ceiling | 12,000 m |
| Max. Rate of climb | 16.7 m / s |
| Range | 1,700 km |
| drive | Two Pratt & Whitney JT8D-15 - turbofan engines , each with 68.9 kN thrust |
| Thrust-to-weight ratio |
|
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f g Niels Klußmann, Arnim Malik: Lexicon of aviation . Springer, Berlin / Heidelberg / New York 2004, ISBN 3-540-20556-X , pp. 368 .
- ^ Civil Dassault aircraft: Mercure: Origins and prototype. (No longer available online.) Dassault Aviation , archived from the original on May 27, 2012 ; Retrieved March 19, 2013 .
- ↑ Helmut Kreuzer: Jetliner: from the Comet to the Airbus A321 . Air Gallery Verlag, Ratingen 1991, ISBN 3-9802101-4-6 .
- ↑ Dassault Mercure 100. (No longer available online.) Auto & Technik MUSEUM eV , archived from the original on January 25, 2013 ; Retrieved March 19, 2013 .