Posted on 12/24/2013 12:12:05 PM PST by Olog-hai
Delta Air Lines on Jan. 6, 2014 will retire its remaining Douglas DC-9 aircraft following Flight 2014 scheduled to depart Minneapolis/St. Paul for Atlanta at 4:20 p.m. (CST), the last scheduled commercial flight of the DC-9 by a major U.S. airline.
“The DC-9 has been a workhorse in our domestic fleet while providing a reliable customer experience,” said Nat Pieper, Delta’s vice president (for) Fleet Strategy. “The aircraft’s retirement paves the way for newer, more efficient aircraft.”
Since 2008, Delta has removed or retired more than 350 aircraft from its fleet including 50-seat CRJ-200s; Saab 340s and DC-9s; while adding economically efficient, proven-technology aircraft such as the Boeing 777-200LR; two-class, 65 and 76-seat regional jets and variants of the 737 and 717, largely on a capacity-neutral basis. …
(Excerpt) Read more at news.delta.com ...
Boeing 797 has been an email/internet hoax since 2006! Unreal how these hoaxes keep going and going.
Yup...I just got the e-mail last week.
“Have you ever seen Dallas from a DC-9 at night?”
A big tip of the hat to the maintenance crew who have kept these things in the air that long.
The article also says delta has retired their crj-200’s which isn’t exactly true. They have all been moved to delta connection. I flew on one last week.
The DC-9 was always a pilot favorite. The rear mounted engines make the wing very efficient. The Boeing 717 which is based on the DC-9 is very efficient and reliable, but it lacks commonality with other Boeings, making it uneconomical for most airlines.
Delta is taking over all of AirTran’s 717’s after AirTran was acquired by Southwest. That’s probably why Delta is retiring the DC-9.
Airline mechanic here (A&P/FCC).., The DC-9 was a great a/c. The last of them Delta is retiring is the -50 version (lead sled).
The 717 is crap and very unreliable. Sure it sips fuel but leaves passengers and crew stranded.
Both. The oldest will be scrapped and cannibalized to keep the rest flying.
The wisdom of the Boeing decision gradually became apparent. Early 717 operators were delighted with the reliability and passenger appeal of the type and ordered more. The small Australian regional airline Impulse is an example. Impulse took a long term lease on five 717s in early 2000, to begin an aggressive expansion into mainline routes. To the surprise of few, the ambitious move could not be sustained in competition with the majors and Impulse sold out to Qantas in May, 2001. This left Qantas with a more-or-less unwanted handful of warmed-over DC-9s to spoil the efficiency of its fleet of large Boeing and small BAe 146 jets.http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:45wEO0X1urcJ:www.flightlevel350.com/Boeing-717_aircraft_facts.html+&cd=2&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=usWithin a few months, however, the abilities of the 717 became clear. It is roomier and faster than the BAe-146, cheaper to operate, and has achieved an outstanding dispatch reliability of 99.6%. Maintenence costs are very low: a check C inspection, for example, takes just three days and is required only once in 4500 flying hours. For comparison, the old DC-9, which was always well regarded by engineering departments for its fuss free nature, needed 21 days for a check C. The new Rolls Royce BR715 engine design is highly modular: none of the line replaceable units takes more than an hour to exchange and about a third of them can be changed in under 15 minutes. Boeing claims a better than 10% operating cost advantage over the A318.
The result has been that many 717 operators, even accidental ones like Qantas, have become converts to the type. Qantas has bought more 717s to bring their fleet up to 14, and it is the front running candidate to replace their large BAe 146 fleet as well. Other significant orders have come from Hawaiian Airlines, Midwest Express, and Pembroke Leasing.
Wow.
5.56mm
When I was a kid in the early 60s my Father bought me a used pair of Nippon Kogaku binoculars for my birthday.
Our property was just East of the Southern Airlines flight path. I used to go to the top of the pasture and watch DC-3s headed to Atlanta from Ft. Walton Bch/Eglin. I don’t recall ever seeing jet passenger planes.
On the other hand, I got to see all kinds of military jets. We lived around 25 miles NE of Eglin main and were also in the area they flew very often.
I thought the MD-80 was a DC-9 with some updates and different engines.
The DC-9-80 introduced a series of improvements to the basic DC-9 airframe. The stretch and upgrade is treated as a new family of aircraft. Pre -80 airframes are still DC-9s.
Imagine being the passengers sitting in the outer wing seats. You’ll go up and down 30 or 40 feet every time the plane banks. They’d have to put you in a bubble so the vomit doesn’t wash down the aisles.
I don’t remember the Boeing 717, but I do remember the 727, which looked an awful lot like an MD-80 or DC-9. I used to fly Eastern Airlines 727’s from DC to Hartford in the 70’s. It had the same noise problems in the rear, and I was happy with the 737 with the engines on the wings.
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