American Airlines retired 20 more of its MD80 jetliners this week, in a one-day operation that saw them flying in from all over to the salvage yard at Roswell, NM at the rate of about one every 5 minutes for an hour-and-a-half.
Once the heart of American’s fleet, with more than 370 of them in service, the numbers are now down to about 50, and they’ll all be gone by late next year, or early 2018, replaced by newer, more fuel-efficient 737s and A320s.
They also represent the last mainline planes in American’s fleet that don’t come from either Boeing or Airbus. The MD80 was built out from the last planned Douglas plane, the DC9-80. When Douglass merged with McDonnell, the name became MD80, also known as the Super 80. Eventually, Boeing acquired the McDonnell Douglas jetliner business.
Judging from the sad comments running on sites reporting the retirement, the 140-seat plane was popular with crews and fliers, who nicknamed it the “Mad Dog” because of the initials.
Photo: Moto “Club4AG” Miwa/Wikimedia
