Trijet

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A trijet is an aircraft powered by three jet engines. An aircraft with three piston engines is a trimotor.

Some trijets include:

• Boeing 727
• Dassault Aviation Falcon 50, Falcon 900
• Hawker-Siddeley Trident
• Lockheed L-1011 Tristar
• McDonnell Douglas DC-10, MD-11
• Tupolev Tu-154
• Yakovlev Yak-40
• Yakovlev Yak-42

A trijet version of the Boeing 747 was planned, but never produced.

Today, trijet production has all but ceased. With engines being more reliable, two-engined aircraft are the most common except on the largest aircraft such as the Boeing 747 which have four engines. A real disadvantage with trijets is positioning the central engine. On most trijets they are place at the tail along the middle producing some technical difficulties. A "straight" layout such as the DC-10 and MD-11 leave the engine high above the ground making access difficult. Another option is an S-shaped duct like that found on the Boeing 727, Tupolev 154 and Lockheed Tristar, which is a complicated and costly design.

During the late 1970s and early 1980s three was the most common number of engines on US air carrier jets, making up a majority of all such airplanes in 1980. From 1985 to 2003 the number of such planes in service has sunk from 1488 to 602. The number of twin-jets has more than quadrupled in the same period.^[1]

[edit] Reference

• Modern Commercial Aircraft Willian Green, Gordon Swanborough and John Mowinski, 1987

1. ^ Table 1-13: Active U.S. Air Carrier and General Aviation Fleet by Type of Aircraft Bureau of Transportation Statistics