NM said:
I thought Ansett was about the only operator to have a 3-crew flight deck on the 767, making their original 767 fleet quite unique. As far as I know, all QF 767s were delivered as 2-crew standard Boeing flight deck configuration.
A few comments and quotes to clear this up a little.
'In August 1981, eleven months before the first scheduled delivery of Boeing's new airplane, the 767, Dean Thornton, the program's vice president-general manager, faced a critical decision. Foe several years Boeing had lobbied the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) for permission to build wide-bodied aircraft with two-, rather than three-person coughpits. Permission had been granted in late July. Unfortunately the 767 had originally been designed with a three-person coughpit, and thirty of those planes were already in various stages of production.
Thornton knew that the planes had to be converted to models with two-person coughpits. Bur what was the best way to proceed? Should the changes be made in-line inserting new coughpits into the thirty planes without removing them from the flow of production, or off-line, building the thirty planes with three-person coughpits as originally planned and then retrofitting them with two-person coughpits in a separate rework area? Either way, Thornton knew that a decision had to be made quickly. Promised delivery dates were sacred at Boeing, and the changes in coughpit design might well impose substantial delays.
Further in the article:
Airlines, including those that had already ordered 767's, soon expressed an interest in having their planes delivered with two-person coughpits. Boeing had anticipated such a response and, years earlier, had conducted preliminary studies to determine how best to convert the 767 from its original, three-person coughpit design to a two-person model. Engineers concluded that the thirty-first 767 was still far enough from completion that it, and all subsequent planes could be built with two-person coughpits without modification. Thirty planes, however, were in relatively advanced stages of production. Some were nearly ready to be rolled out and flown; others had complete coughpits but were not yet tested; others had bare coughpits without any electronics installed. But since all thirty were being built according to the plane's original, three coughpit design, all would require some modification.
Customers were notified of the additional cost and delivery delay they could expect on these thirty planes. The impact was not large: a small percentage increase in costs and on average delay of one month from promised delivery dates. All but one airline chose to have their planes built with two-person coughpits.
Copyright 1988 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College. Harvard Business School case 688-040.