In the early 1970s, MDC also saw the benefits of two engines, and came up with a fairly simple solution – a DC-10 with a slightly shortened fuselage and the centre engine eliminated. Dubbed rather logically the “DC-10 Twin”, this airliner could arguably have stopped the Airbus A300 in its tracks – had the threat of the European twinjet been taken seriously at the time – but it posed a danger to the existing DC-10-10 trijet.The DC-10 Twin had a range of 4,000km with a load of 236 passengers, and an in-service target of 1975. However the company dithered over the decision to launch and never gave the Twin the go-ahead. Although the DC-10 became the benchmark long-haul airliner in its category, MDC had to sit by and watch the A300B4 mop up all the short-haul widebody business in the late 1970s. The concept of a twinjet derivative of the DC-10 and later MD-11 were revisited several times during the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s, but none made it off the drawing board.