Operational History
Hoping for mass production of the Mercure (the 300th aircraft was planned to be delivered by the end of 1979), with Break-even hoped for after 125-150 aircraft. Dassault created four plants especially for the Mercure program: Martignas (close to Bordeaux), Poitiers, Seclin (close to Lille) and Istres. On January 30, 1972, Air Inter ordered 10 Mercures, which had to be delivered between 30 October 1973 and 13 December 1975. Due to the lack of other orders, the production line was shut down on 15 December 1975. Only a total of two prototypes and 10 production aircraft were built. One of the prototype (number 02) was eventually refurbished and purchased by Air Inter to add it to its fleet.
Canadair was one of a few sub-contractors involved in the early development of the Mercure.
On 29 April 1995, the last two Mercures in service flew their last commercial flight. The Mercures ran in total 360,000 flight hours, carrying 44 million passengers in 440,000 flights with no accidents, and a 98% in-service reliability.
Read more about this topic: Dassault Mercure
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