The DC-3, the world's first successful commercial airliner, was long a staple on airline routes after its introduction in 1935.
But the Malaysian airliner was not lost.
The success of the Viscount turboprop airliner was emulated by a host of others.
The world's first supersonic airliner was a child of the Fifties.
Even an aircraft carrier, he suggested, could no longer assume that a civilian airliner was benign.
Suspicions had intensified throughout the week that the Metrojet airliner was blown up.
"It was the day that the Korean airliner was shot down," he remembered.
It is a dozen years since the last passenger jet, a small regional airliner, was assembled in the country.
Declassified F.B.I. documents place him at two meetings during which the bombing of a Cubana airliner was planned in 1976.
A spokeswoman for Shannon Airport said the airliner was towed to a remote location for the police search.
The airliner was en route from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing when contact was lost an hour after take-off.
