Greatest Civil Aircraft ever

[lovejoy0120]

What aircraft is the best plane ever ?
Or else you could give a top 10

[sddsddean]

No competition...Concorde!

[Clanad]

Well, has to be Boeing 727, from years of experience flying this machine, I can tell you it comes as close to overall perfection as any. Concorde is a good answer but the never use list is quite long... such as never use over land because of the massive sonic boom... never use if you want to fly more than 100 passengers, never use if they all happen to be basketball players, never use with tall flight attendants (cabin was only 1.8 meters high... but it sure went fast!

[NORMANTHEDOG]

the most successful plane for passenger numbers and aircraft sold by boeing is the 737

[Colortec]

Concorde allowed passengers to arrive before they departed.

Thats gotta be good.

[tony1941]

A Czech Litov 410. Seats about 14. No steps needed, it's so low you just step into it. Looks like a Transit van with some builder's planks strapped across it for wings. I've seen one being tested stacked with andbags and one engine turned off for take-off and it went up like a lift. For safety, it's my choice.

[tony1941]

Sorry, it should have been Sandbags!!!

[boro1986]

Id have to say a hercules i have flew to many a sh1thole in them

[yassa]

Concorde,,, no one has matched it or beat it since. When they stop flying boeings no one gives a dam. The world stepped out there house to look in the sky when concorde was about.

[heathfield]

Clanad - Though a jet-setter, I take it you're old enough to remember the Douglas DC3?
This 'Gooney Bird' - it's got to be right up toward the top of the list. Over 13000 of them produced. An incredibly rugged workhorse, first built 70 years ago, and many still flying today.
Tales of its durability are legion - one carried out a safe emergency landing on the Rosenlai Glacier in Switzerland in 1946, and was abandoned. Covered in snow and ice, they reckon it'll re-appear in about 600 year's time. They also reckon that it'll probably only take some minor repair work to get it back in the air!
It has my vote. ;-)

[chakka35]

I'm surprised that Concorde has been nominated, because it was a failure and a predictable one. It got through Parliament on the grounds that it would cost �143M and that we would sell 450 Concordes to all the world's airlines. In the end it cost eight times as much and we didn't sell a single one. It was obvious from the beginning that the sonic boom would make the Atlantic its only viable route, but politicians ignored that and gave us a lot of guff about cutting down the flying time to Australia. Beautiful, yes, and a fast flyer, but an amateur aircraft in the end. The last British world-beater was the Viscount.

[Clanad]

In response to heathfield's excellent suggestion, I'd also nominate the venerable DC-3/C-47 number one followed closely by the B-727. Having flown the DC-3 many hours, my only real complaint was the inability to keep ones feet warm in the machine in the winter. If it was raining outside, it was raining harder inside the cockpit... And I sitill have some uniform shirts around that are oil stained by the walk-around inspection pre-flight. I'd swear, the Pratt and Whitney engines liked to lay in waiting just to drip oil on the unsuspecting pilot, no matter how careful...