Let's have a look at Every Jetliner Ever Made. In alphabetical order, but with Airbus and Boeing at the end because it wouldn't be fair otherwise. Today we're going to look at Convair of the United States and Dassault of France, who made fascinating airliners notable for being huge flops, because they misjudged the market in subtly different ways.
Before we begin, a picture of a Convair C-131 at Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, in 1979, which has nothing to do with jetliners but I like it:
CONVAIR (United States)
In 1943 Consolidated Aircraft of New York and Vultee of Los Angeles realised that they loved each other very much. They decided to tie the knot and become The Consolidated Vultee Aircraft Corporation, but Convair sounded snappier so that quickly became the official name.
Consolidated was famous for the Catalina flying boat and the B-24 Liberator bomber, while Vultee made the BT-13, which was the USAAF's standard basic trainer during the Second World War. Vultee made almost ten thousand of them. We're talking big military contracts, big government money, and so when the war was over Convair continued to concentrate on warplanes.
In 1953 the company was purchased by General Dynamics, but it continued to operate as an independent unit. In the years that followed Convair became one of those fingers-in-many-pies organisations, with a product range that included anti-aircraft missiles, the F-102 and F-106 supersonic interceptors, a turboprop flying boat, a space rocket - the Atlas - and the staggeringly expensive B-58 Hustler jet bomber.
A few things link Convair's post-war jet projects. They were fast! For a while Convair sold the fastest bomber (the B-58), the fastest jet interceptor (the F-106), and the fastest airliner (the 880). And secondly they were all very expensive, extremely specialised, and beset by developmental delays. The F-106 only came about because its predecessor, the F-102, wasn't as fast as Convair hoped, but the company had spent so much money and came so close to specification that the US government gave them a second chance. This was acceptable for government work, but it was a poor fit for the commercial market.
As mentioned passim the Second World War acted as a big reset button for the European aviation industry. Instead of restarting production of pre-war piston-engined designs, Europe decided to skip ahead to turboprops and turbojets. Meanwhile the United States carried on as before, with Douglas and Lockheed restarting production of piston designs. Initially they were successful - between them, the Douglas DC-6 and Lockheed Super Constellation sold over 1,000 units - but by the mid-1950s the US aviation industry found itself in danger of being leap-frogged. In response Boeing gambled on a jet airliner derived from a military contract, Douglas scrambled to catch up with Boeing, and Convair decided it should have a go as well.
Convair's field of expertise was fast bombers and fast interceptors, so the company decided to make a fast airliner, powered by military-style General Electric turbojets. Convair decided that there was space in the market for a fast, regional-to-intercontinental-range airliner aimed at the luxury end of the market. There were even plans to clad the aircraft in a gold-coloured exterior skin, somewhat akin to American Airlines' unpainted aluminium aircraft, but the cost of ensuring that each panel was the same shade of gold was too much and the plan was abandoned.
In retrospect Convair made the same mistake as BAC and Aérospatiale when they developed Concorde. They believed that jet aircraft would continue to be exclusive, that turboprops would continue to service the budget market for decades to come, and that there was a market for a super-fast executive airliner.
In reality there was a market for executive jets, but the demand was met by small business jets rather than full-sized airliners, because business executives generally don't want to share space with ordinary people. Meanwhile everybody else wanted to get to their destination as cheaply and quickly as possible, preferably cheaply.
Convair's design was the CV-880, which made its first flight in 1959, slightly later than the Boeing 707 and Douglas DC-8. In common with the other first-generation jetliners the CV-880 had four engines, which were derived from the General Electric J79, a fuel-guzzling turbojet also used by the Lockheed F-104 Starfighter. It had a three-two seating aisle arrangement, versus three-three for the 707 and DC-8, with slightly larger seats than either. Passenger capacity was around 110, about two-thirds that of the competition. Fuel consumption was similar, but with two-thirds the passenger capacity the fuel-cost-per-passenger was higher.
In its favour the CV-880 had a higher cruising speed than the competition. Convair hoped that the shorter journey times would attract an exclusive customer base, and their advertisements promised all-first-class seating, but as far as I can tell only the launch customer, Delta of the United States, actually flew all-first-class, and then only briefly.
In practice the speed differential barely had any impact on timetables. The 880 had a cruise speed around 40mph or so faster than the Douglas DC-8 and Boeing 707, 600mph vs 560mph, which made for good copy, but in practice it only saved time on shorter routes, and then only 15-20 minutes. For trans-continental US flights and international flights abroad the 880 had to make a refuelling stop, which nullified whatever speed advantage it had.
Even in the 1960s airlines cared about fuel economy. The 880 burned roughly the same amount of fuel as a 707 or DC-8 to take two-thirds as many passengers two-thirds the distance in fractionally less time. To make things worse the CV-880's introduction coincided with the launch of the Boeing 720, a cheaper, shortened version of the 707 that still carried more passengers than the CV-880. For the most part airlines realised that the future of jet travel was low-cost mass-market transport, which left Convair without a market.
Convair only sold 65 CV-880s, including an 880M variant with more fuel and improved avionics. The company then switched to the 990 Coronado, which was similar, but had more efficient turbofan engines and a more complicated wing design. After promising their launch customer, American Airlines, that they could make the 990 fly at 635mph, Convair encountered a series of aerodynamic problems that necessitated the addition of unsightly aerodynamic fairings to the 990's wings. American Airlines cut their order to twenty airframes at a knock-down price. A few more orders trickled in, but ultimately Convair only made 37 990s, many of which were later upgraded to the longer-range, less-draggy 990A configuration.
The second-largest buyer was Swissair, who wanted something larger than a turboprop but smaller than the Boeing 707. Before the oil crises of the 1970s the CV-990 actually made some sense in the European market, particularly in centrally-located Switzerland. There was for a while a business-class market that had benefited from the post-war boom. After the first wave of Convair owners disposed of their 880s and 990s the aircraft had brief second lives as charter jets, where the low purchase price offset the high fuel costs.
In 1970 a US charter airline called Modern Air flew a former American Airline CV-990 from Berlin to Paris as a one-off, men-only busenvogel flight, where the stewardesses wore see-through lingerie. Even in 1970 this was controversial, and Modern Air's owners told the company to knock it off, but I'm writing about it in 2025 so in that one narrow sense it was a success.
Most 990s were withdrawn from service in the wake of the early-1970s oil crisis, although the airframes were apparently very robust, and a few saw out the 1970s as cargo aircraft. The 880 generally outlasted it, but only for a few years. In the end Convair lost roughly half a billion dollars on the 880 and 990 project, which was a lot of money in the 1960s, and never again tried to make a jetliner.
The two types had a good safety record despite their hot performance. There were plenty of crashes, but they were almost entirely the result of crew error, poor weather, mid-air collisions, and an unusually high number of training accidents.
One 880 became famous outside the world of aviation. Top late rock singer Elvis Presley bought a surplus 880 in 1975 and had it converted into an executive transport. He named it Lisa Marie, after his daughter. Following his death it was sold on, and then re-purchased by Presley's estate. In 1984 it made its final flight back to Graceland, where it remains as a museum exhibit.
DASSAULT (France)
Dassault came into being in 1947, although its roots were the pre-war Société des Avions Marcel Bloch, named after its founder, Marcel Bloch. The company was nationalised by the French government in 1937. After the fall of France in 1940 the company was taken over by the Germans, who eventually sent Marcel Bloch to Buchenwald as punishment for refusing to help them enthusiastically enough.
Meanwhile Bloch's brother, Darius, fought for the French Resistance under a series of code names. In 1947 Marcel, who survived his wartime treatment, revived the aviation business, calling it Dassault, as a play on his brother's codename Chardasso, itself a play on the French for "assault tank". He even renamed himself Marcel Dassault, because Dassault sounds way cooler than Bloch.
Can you think of another man who named two different aviation companies after himself, using two different names? Neither can I. In the mid-1950s Dassault developed the Mirage III, a classic multi-role jet fighter with a distinctive delta-winged design. The Mirage III set up Dassault for life, and the company still exists today as an independent entity. Dassault also designed a series of business jets, which are outside the scope of this article, although the Falcon 900 is notable for being the last trijet in series production.
Dassault also made an airliner, the Mercure. It was a disaster. And yet it wasn't a terrible idea. It was developed in the late 1960s as a short-range, high-capacity twinjet that would compete with the Boeing 737 and Douglas DC-9. The initial plan was to engine it with what would become the Snecma/CFM M56, but development of that powerplant was extremely protracted, so Dassault picked the Pratt and Whitney JT8 instead, essentially the same engine that powered the 737 and DC-9. As a result the Mercure had the same amount of engine power as the competition, but it was heavier, and as a result it burned more fuel.
It also had smaller fuel tanks, because Dassault believed there was a gap in the market for a jet that would carry more passengers than the 737 and DC-9. The Mercure had a capacity of around 160 passengers, versus 120-130 for the competition, but the larger passenger cabin meant that most of the fuel had to be carried in the wings, and there was no room to add extra fuel tanks to the fuselage.
The Mercure had an unusually short maximum range of around 1,000 miles, about half that of the contemporary Boeing 737 models, and only then with a reduced passenger load. It was essentially a giant regional jet. The project was announced in 1969, with the French government contributing over half the development costs, but it was an international co-production, with the fuselage made by Fiat of Italy and CASA of Spain, the engines by Pratt and Whitney of the United States, and the avionics by SABCA of Belgium. Had the Mercure been a huge success it would have been interesting to see how Dassault might have co-existed with Airbus, which was then in its formative stages.
On paper the Mercure wasn't awful. Despite being heavier than the 737 and DC-9 it was faster, thanks to some clever aerodynamic engineering. The configuration was state-of-the-art, with a heads-up display, a cockpit optimised for just two crewmembers, and autoland capability. On a visual level it was a tidy design that resembled the Boeing 737 or the later Airbus A-320. The project was apparently brought in on time and on budget, and it was certified for flight in 1974.
Sales were slow at first. Disastrously so, not helped by a major oil crisis. Launch customer Air Inter of France ordered 10 Mercures, which began revenue service in 1974. Air Inter operated the aircraft mostly on internal routes from Paris to the south of France and back, but despite trouble-free service the Mercure was met with a hubbub of apathy from other airlines. Dassault failed to sell any more Mercures throughout the entire rest of the 1970s.
But there was a happy ending. In 1983 Air Inter asked for one more Mercure, so Dassault upgraded one of the prototypes to production status, bringing the total number of Mercure sales to eleven. And so Dassault managed to sell Mercures in two separate decades. Admittedly this didn't do anything to help Dassault's bottom line - the company hoped to sell three hundred Mercures, but in the end only managed to sell eleven - but eleven is bigger than ten, isn't it? There was also a twelfth Mercure, a prototype, but no-one wanted it.
Why did the Mercure fail? The oil crisis didn't help. The existence of the Boeing 737 and Douglas DC-9 was a major issue. By 1974 those aircraft were well-established. The Mercure's position as the first airliner from a new manufacturer was a tough sell. The contemporary, brand-new Airbus A-300 languished for several years before Eastern Air Lines of the United States bought a bunch, but no-one came to the Mercure's rescue. As far as I can tell Dassault didn't market the type in the United States. Given the short range, the company would presumably have had to transport a sample aircraft across the Atlantic by cargo ship.
The key problem was a total lack of flexibility. The Mercure only made a profit if it carried a two-thirds-full passenger load over a distance of around 600 miles, which - again, on paper - wasn't necessarily a disastrous proposition. The problem is that no airline beyond Air Inter was interested in an aircraft that could only do that one, narrow thing.
Had the Mercure emerged a decade later it might have attracted the attention of the nascent low-cost airline industry, but even then the likes of Ryanair and EasyJet would have been unhappy with an airliner that couldn't fly from Dublin to Rome without a refuelling stop. London-Dublin, or Dublin-Edinburgh, or perhaps London-Paris was within the Mercure's reach, but London-Benidorm was out of the question, so it was useless for the British package holiday market. The likes of Swissair and Lufthansa, whose home bases are centrally placed within Europe, opted for smaller Embraer regional jets instead. As a final nail in the coffin the introduction of France's TGV high-speed rail network in the 1980s removed whatever raison d'etre the Mercure had within France.
An airline that bought the Mercure would have found itself trapped, unable to expand. Dassault mooted a longer-ranged, more efficient Mercure 200, but the project went nowhere, which in retrospect is one of the big "what-ifs" of the aviation industry, because the conceptually similar Airbus A320 went on to be one of the best-selling airliners of all time.
The Mercure remained in service with Air Inter until 1995, shortly before the company was absorbed into Air France. The irony is that during its twenty years of service it had a fantastic safety record, with no crashes and no deaths. In 1986 one Mercure was battered by a hailstorm, forcing the pilot to lean out of a side window to see the runway, but no-one was seriously hurt. Along with the Vickers VC-10 and Hawker Trident it's an interesting example of a technically clever airliner that was laid low by an inflexible specification.
In the 1980s the Mercure was occasionally cited as an example of the failure of the European aviation industry to compete with the US, and during the early years of the Airbus project it was widely assumed that the A-300 would go the same way, but Airbus survived its early fallow period.
Next, Douglas. Many years ago this series of articles would have been titled "every jetliner ever made, but with Airbus, Boeing, and Douglas at the end, otherwise it wouldn't be fair", because Douglas was a giant. And then it was gone.
