Swissair was the second European airline to offer a service to the People's Republic of China, introducing service to Beijing and Shanghai in 1975. In the same year, Swissair was the launch customer for the DC-9-51. In 1977, Swissair was the launch customer for the third DC-9 type, the DC-9-81 variant, now called the MD-80. Armin Baltensweiler had traveled to a meeting of McDonnell-Douglas' directorial board in St. Louis to convince them to further stretch the fuselage of the DC-9-51. Baltensweiler was called the “Father of the MD-80". In 1979, Swissair was the first company to order the Airbus A310-200, and the jumbo jet variant with a stretched upper deck, the Boeing 747-300. Also, the Fokker 100 short-range aircraft and the three-engined MD-11 were aircraft for which Swissair was the launch customer. 1983 saw the replacement of the older DC-9s by MD-83s.