The company is donating the plane used yesterday to the Flying Hospital Inc., a nonprofit humanitarian organization that performs medical missions around the world. Stargazer is a Lockheed L-1011 TriStar built in 1974, that was modified in 1994 for use by Orbital Sciences (now part of Northrop Grumman) as a mother ship launch pad for the Pegasus launch vehicle. Never even rode on an L1011 and on the DC-10 Ive only ridden in the cockpit jumpseat. It was the third wide-body airliner to enter commercial operations, after the Boeing 747 and the McDonnell Douglas DC-10. I know that when I sat on a taxiway in a lesser airplane and realized that I could see the pilots forearms resting on the armrests they were really surrounded by glass. Delta has bought new Boeing 767s and 777s to replace the L-1011. The Lockheed L-1011 TriStar (pronounced 'El-ten-eleven') 1 is an American medium-to-long-range, wide-body trijet airliner built by the Lockheed Corporation. It was amazing.'īut the plane, with its three engines and three cockpit crew members, had become an expensive gas guzzler. 'Flying in the cockpit of that plane was like being in a big glass bubble, like floating through the sky. It's a grand old plane,' said Bob Reiss, a writer who spent three days logging 16,000 miles on a Delta L-1011 for his 1994 book about air travel. Its remaining L-1011s are parked in the desert at a storage facility in Victorville, Calif.ĭelta said 300 employees raised more than $23,000 in a silent auction for the chance to fly on the last flight to California. The plane entered service with Eastern Airlines in 1972 and fought for many years with the McDonnell-Douglas DC-10 for supremacy on long routes.ĭelta has sold eight of the aircraft to foreign carriers. Delta was the largest buyer for the L-1011, purchasing 70. The 1960s-era jumbo jet was the last civilian model built by Lockheed and introduced a number of technical innovations for jet travel, including a sophisticated autopilot system and a galley below the passenger deck.įor more than a decade, the L-1011 served as Delta's primary international jet, with a range of 5,600 miles. A total of 250 TriStar jets were produced by Lockheed, and the L-1011 marked the company’s final commercial passenger airliners. American Trans Air, a discount carrier, still flies 17 of the planes, primarily for charter services. The last Lockheed-made passenger jet still in use by a major airline made its final flight yesterday, ending an era for the Bethesda-based company.ĭelta Air Lines was the only major carrier still flying the L-1011 TriStar jumbo jet, which seats as many as 302 people.

L1011 glass cockpit