Pacific
Southwest Airlines Lockheed L-1011 Tristar N 10112
(c/n 1064)
PSA first ordered the Tristar as a high-density seating airliner
(versus, shall we say, a long range
machine) in 1970. When Rolls Royce encountered their cash flow
problems (and filed bankruptcy)
PSA
put the L-1011 order on hold. They re-opened the program in 1973
and put the two aircraft
they had ordered into service in 1974. This was the
period of the first fuel crisis. I was living in
Syracuse, New
York at the time and clearly remember the long gas lines at the pumps.
PSA had
costed out flying the L-1011 at a fuel cost of some .11c a gallon (can
you imagine that?). When this
price
trebled in 1974 they had no option but to put the :L-1011s out to
pasture at Marana, Arizona.
They had intended to re-instate them in 1975 but that never
happened. After several years of inactivity,
N10112 was eventually leased by Lockheed to Aero Peru.
Incidentally, the above image was one one
of the
last photographs I ever received from an airline company. Every
once in a while in the 1970s,
as
my business schedule permitted, I would write the occasional
request for material and sometimes
(although not
often) received a favorable reply.