A Commercial Failure: The Dassault Mercure Story

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Watch More Mustard Videos & Support The Channel: https://nebula.tv/mustard Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/MustardChannel Mustard Store: https://mustardchannel.com/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mustard_channel Twitter: https://twitter.com/MustardVideos Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Mustard-109952378202335 In the late 1960s, French aircraft manufacturer Dassault Aviation made a huge bet. The company designed its first commercial airliner, the Mercure 100, to do one thing fantastically well; fly short routes more efficiently than any other airliner. With ambitions to take on rival giants like Boeing and Douglas, Dassault invested huge sums into developing an airliner with unprecedented short-range performance. Anticipating demand for hundreds of aircraft, the company even built several factories across France. But Dassault's new aircraft would go down as one of the worst commercial failures in aviation history, as virtually no airline ended up wanting it. Despite aggressive marketing, the aircraft refused to sell. Among other factors, it simply didn’t have enough range compared to its rivals the Boeing 737 and Douglas DC-9. While the Mercure was highly efficient, airlines wanted an aircraft that also had the versatility to fly both short and medium range routes. The airliner had so carefully been optimized for short haul routes, that its airframe couldn't easily be adapted into a longer range variant. Developing a longer-range version of the Mercure would have been far too expensive to ever be profitable for the company. Dassault had basically engineered itself into a corner. Only 10 production aircraft were ever sold, to a single French airline (Air Inter), at the behest of the French government. #Dassault #Mercure #Airliners #Airplanes The first 650 people to click this link get two months of Skillshare for just $0.99 at http://skl.sh/mustard3 Like the the aviation industry posters found in this video? Visit The Aviation Ancestry Database, containing over 80,000 high-quality examples: http://www.aviationancestry.co.uk/ Thanks for watching! Please Like, Comment and Subscribe!