Originally Posted by
humanoid94
I can only assume those 747-200s are drinking fuel like it is going out of style for those numbers to work.
It's not just that. The 742's use the old PW JT9D engine which is totally unique in the NWA fleet. No other aircraft in the fleet uses the JT9D (since the DC-10-40's were retired).
Plus, there's the extra cost of the flight engineer and the complexities of scheduling a cockpit crew of 3 vs 2.