Vintage Airline Seat Map: American Airlines DC-10 (Hawaii) from 1987

Let’s kick off the Memorial Day weekend with another Vintage Airline Seat Map, shall we? I previously posted two other versions of American Airlines’ DC-10s from the past (here and here), and the one appearing below was seen flying the skies in 1987.

Seating a total of 313 passengers in a high-density “Hawaii” configuration, there were only 16 First Class seats scrunched up there where the fuselage begins to taper towards the flight deck. It appears they removed the front galley on this version to accommodate the seats, which were in a 2-2-2 layout.

Economy seated 297 passengers in the common 2-5-2 configuration. Something interesting to note is that they had an entire closet dedicated for just blankets (near the rear lavatories).

I’d definitely be seated in ‘Zone 1’ ahead of door two. In First, you’d likely find me in the second row and in economy I’d probably go for row five or six.

Where would you sit?


  1. Thanks for sharing. BTW, do you remember if the “Hawaii” configuration had more, or fewer, first class seats than the standard domestic configuration?

    • @AAdvantage Geek: The Hawaii version had more seat. The standard DC-10 flying at the same time was 34/256 for a total of 290. I’ll post that seat map eventually (probably not for a while to break things up).

  2. Yikes – here we have the beginning of miserable air travel post deregulation. Removing galleys, cutting down first class. This makes any config out there today look like a walk in the park.

    Imagine if flyertalk were around when this was introduced…

  3. These early ‘Tens’ had lower galleys, so meals were cooked below deck and sent up in a heating cart for the service. Beverage carts, coffee makers, and other items were stored in service stations on the main level, basically mini-galleys. Elevators at the service stations were used to move the carts up and down between decks. The lower galley was massive, and occupied a lot of space that could otherwise be used for revenue-generating cargo. Lower galleys (like cocktail lounges, conversation pits and polyester) were a 70s-era trend that didn’t survive the long haul!

    • ACTUALLY,it wasn’t the early DC-10’s that had lower lobe galleys..most domestic carriers had the DC-10/10 version which was the most popular model and it had the lower galleys which were long and narrow with rows of ovens and storage below with the food carts. The food carts in coach held trays for meals,the meals were heated in the ovens and placed in upper section of the tray cart and sent up to be placed statigically on either side of the plane in the galleys or placed next to the doors so the flight attendants could do their service. The first and business 3 tiered carts were sent up to the appropriate cabins to be wheeled down and first and business class service could begin after the coach meals were sent up.
      On international flights the DC-10/30 was used (overwater) including Hawaii ( which used the high density version) to pack in the maximum amount of passengers! The DC-10/30 had longer range capacity and had all main floor galleys! This is because it had to carry more fuel, cargo and weight so the DC-10/30 was built with an extra set of landing gear where the lower galleys were on the 10 series and designed to retract into the fuselage where the galleys were. You can always tell the difference from a DC-10/10 and a DC-10/30 because it has an extra set of landing gear in the middle of the regular landing gear! All of the lounges/piano bars of the 1970’s on the DC-10 were always on the main level and never below deck! As a flight attendant we loved working on the DC-10/10 with the galleys below as we could escape from the passengers!!! IT WAS A BLAST TO FLY ON!!

  4. I actually worked on these airplanes to Hawaii out of Dallas. The plane was a GIANT coach section that went on forever. There was a movie screen that came down I think at the 3LR cross aisle. They were always sold out. Going out they had a nice lunch and a snack with a white chocolate macadamia nut cookie and coming a nice dinner and a muffin before landing. We used to try to service before landing as quietly as possible because it was an allnighter out of Hawaii.

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