Original MD-83 version by
Ralph D. Mitchell Jr., Eric Johnson & Mike Vidal
'McPlane' Textures: Christian Noetzli

THE ORIGINAL

McPlane(tm) is the latest and hottest civilian airplane to be spotted in the Swiss and European skies.It is a joint venture of Crossair (a daughter company of Swissair), Hotelplan (a major Swiss travel agency) and McDonald's (no information needed).

The idea for the McPlane was originally born in the innocent brain of the youngster of a Crossair manager - asking his dad why he couldn't have a hamburger on a plane. Kids can be very insisting on things like that, and dad himself wasn't very satisfied with his answer. Yes, why not? The idea fell on good grounds almost everywhere and in less than a year McPlane(tm) was 'materialized'.
	Advertisments for the 'McPlane' referred to the fact that its first official flight was scheduled for April 1st 1996.

Of course, a good and 'catchy' design is essential for a 'fun plane' and as you can judge now by yourself, they quite succeeded in that. What you can't see is the interior: all 161 seats are coated by red leather.

The catering, of course, is cuisine à la McDonald: the well known burgers, side dishes and sweeties are served. Almost everything from your favourite (?) eating place - with one important exception: no orders accepted for french fries! There's no frying device in the board kitchen - for safety reasons.

McPlane is not a business, but rather a family plane and it mainly serves holiday destinations in Europe and Near East. Disneyland Europe at Paris, e.g., is one of them but also many places in the Mediterrean Sea. During the holidays a special McDonald's hostess helps the regular cabin crew.

View over McPlane's left wing onto the airport of Heraklion, the destination of the first scheduled holiday flight on April 1st 1996.	HB-IUH had a Swissair livery before it was transferred to Shannon, Ireland, where customization took place. An 'american style' opening party for the McPlane was held at Crossair's home base, Basle airport, on Friday March 29th. Three days later, on Monday April 1st, McPlane took off for its first regular flight from Basle-Mulhouse to Heraklion on the Greek island Crete. Passenger feedback was very positive.

THE MODEL

McPlane for FS5/FSW95 is available in 2 versions:
Version "A" (45 kb) is based on the airframe and flight model of Andy Meehan's "American Airlines" MD-82 that itself descends from Bill Alderson's "Cyber Air" MD-83. There's a few minor changes I applied to the airframe, mainly to get rid of a nasty "bleed through" at the tail fin.





Version "B" (50 kb) is based on the airframe and flight model of the "Continental" MD-80/82 by Ralph P Mitchell, Eric Johnson and Mike Vidal.

Textures are basically the same on both versions. It's up to you to choose the one you like the most.

Panel recommendation

No need to say that my fellow countryman Max Spoerri's MD-81 panel is the panel of choice for flying this (Mc)plane. The original version for FS5 (md81-uni.zip) is still available in Compuserve's Flight Simulation Forum. However, with Max' permission Chuck Dome has converted the panel for use in FSW95. Like my aircraft the MD-81 panel is freeware and you may download the new version for FSW95 right from here (35 kb).