In the 1960s, French aircraft manufacturer Dassault was known for its iconic Mirage fighter jets, and the Falcon business jets. But it had bigger ambitions and had just spotted an opportunity. You see, most of the civil air routes in the world are actually very short and they were mostly served by Boeing’s new 737 and the Douglass DC-9. If Dassault could design a special airliner optimized for these short-haul routes, it could outperform the giants in a key market. With low operating costs and even better fuel economy, airlines initially showed interest.

Development began in 1967, and the manufacturer was so convinced in the idea, that they built four more factories across the country to supply projected demands. In fact, the French government was also so optimistic on the concept, that they granted a loan for half the development costs to Dassault, in hopes that it would.

The aircraft, though it used the same engines as the 737, Pratt & Whitney turbofans, the Mercure could carry more passengers than the 737. And despite carrying the heavier load, it could even outclimb the 737, decreasing fuel costs.

These performance improvements were due to fact that the Mercure was so tightly optimized for short-haul flights. It had a drastically reduced fuel tank, holding just enough to fly those routes. And due to the decreased weight, Dassault could decrease the structural strength of the body by as much as 10%, further reducing weight and increasing fuel efficiency.

Furthermore, Dassault used Computer-Aided Design, a then-revolutionary technology, to specially design wings that gave the Mercure better performance during take-off and landing, an important metric to measure efficiency in the short flights it would take.

But these optimizations came with, you guessed it, some disadvantages. You see, due to the cut fuel tank size, the Mercure had a ma range of only 1600 kilometers, with the Boeing 737 having over triple that. There was also an important design difference. The Boeing 737 was on a robust platform, modular enough to host multiple variants, each to suit particular needs. Now over 40 years after its release, some 737s have over twice the passenger capacity of the first. But the Mercure, it was not going to be easy adding range to it, and due to the optimizations for short-haul, not very efficient either.

Soon, airlines realized that the high degree of technological optimizations had more problems than it had advantages. Though the Mercure was the more economical choice of operators, the aircraft refused to sell. Why? You see, if the Mercure was operated out of France, the short-haul optimizations make sense. But that is only for France; from outlying European countries like Spain, the limited range is quite limiting. And in the US, it's just even more of a problem.

Airlines, as it turns out, were willing to take a hit on operating efficiency if the airplane would be able to fill both short and medium routes. Moreover, the 1990s oil crises and the devalued US dollar limited airlines’ purchasing power.

Thus, in the end, Air Inter, a government-owned French airline was the only one that bought Mercures. The 11 that were in service retires after flying 400,000 flights, all short hauls. Dassault struggled to recover from this enormous financial miscalculation, and analysts say Dassault needed to sell at least 135 Mercures just to break even from the R&D investment.

---

As always, thanks for visiting the blog, and I really appreciate that you have come this far, and I hope you liked it. If you did, click the like button. If you like my posts, join us, if you haven't yet. Check out our forum too, while you are at it.

Credits: Mustard, http://www.aviationancestry.co.uk/, youtube.com, cgtrader.com.