On Tuesday, the last of Delta’s McDonnell Douglas-branded aircraft gathered at the grandiosely-named Arkansas International Airport in Blytheville, not far from the Missouri and Tennessee borders. Despite its name, this former military base doesn’t see much international traffic… or any traffic for that matter. On occasion, there are bursts of … Read the post
Category: MD80
American may not have had a 747 to retire like Delta and United, but the airline put together one heck of a tribute to its MD-80s on their last day in revenue service. Though I was invited, I wasn’t able to make the trip, so I had to live vicariously … Read the post
This week’s featured link:
FAA and Boeing initially disagreed on severity of “catastrophic” 737 MAX software glitch – The Air Current
Best I can tell, this article is outside the paywall for The Air Current, so even those who don’t subscribe can enjoy the read. It’s yet another setback to … Read the post
This week’s featured link:
Delta Air Lines CEO on why he still flies in the back of the plane – Marketplace
Here’s a great 27m25s podcast where Kai Ryssdal from Marketplace interviews Delta CEO Ed Bastian. It’s a long, seemingly candid conversation that’s well worth a listen. I particularly like … Read the post
Another week, another airline retires the good ole’ MD-80. This past Sunday, Alaska flew its last MD-80 operation, and the airline is now an all-737 fleet. Alaska had a particularly interesting relationship with the MD-80 that brings out all different kinds of emotion in people.
The MD-80 really gave Alaska … Read the post
We knew it was coming. When Midwest said it would ditch its MD-80s, that had to mean a lot of flight cuts and schedule shuffling. Well, now we know the extent of the damage. The new schedule not only cuts 11 cities, but it shuffles a lot of service … Read the post
There’s no question that American has done an absolutely terrible job of managing the latest round of MD-80 maintenance issues from a PR perspective. It’s been so bad, that I’ve seen articles start to question the MD-80 as an airplane, even though there’s no reason for them to do so. … Read the post
Recent media reports might make it seem like the sky is falling; as if every airplane you encounter may be unsafe. Just over the last few days, we’ve seen a rash of very public maintenance issues:
If I went up to 100 people in the US asked them about Allegiant Air, my guess is almost all of them would pose the question asked in the title of this post. I’ve mentioned some of their seemingly random route announcements before, and you’ve probably asked the same question. … Read the post