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Delta Celebrates 25 Years of MD-88's
This past April 2012, a major milestone was achieved at Delta when our workhorse MD-88 fleet reached its 25th birthday with the company. (blog.delta.com) Más...Sort type: [Top] [Newest]
I realize these old MD-88s have their problems, but as sstuff said they are a pleasure to look at. Especially on final.
Having worked for Delta as well, the "Mad Dog" was their latest work horse. Once they retired the B727, the MD-88 became the backbone of their fleet. Happy Birthday!
Their NWA arm kept their DC-10's going forever saying they could stay profitable by keep the old planes going, completely depreciated, while others were spending money on the newest. Then rising fuel costs caught up and my monty trans-Atlantics went to A-330's. But is a 737 NG at 50% capacity more fuel efficient per passenger mile than a MD-88 at 80% capacity (taking a SWAG at load percentage with the same numberical passenger load)?
I'm an aircraft/aviation enthusiast and by no means an expert. My family owns and operates a heavy construction company and we went through something similar with equipment we owned. My grandfather and his brothers who previously owned and operated the company had a fleet of aging equipment. They owned the equipment, it owed them nothing but the ship had sailed long ago where you could get anything for them in a sale/trade. They maintained you could keep fixing them as they required and be ok. This was true when fuel was a quarter of the price it is today but it came to a point where you couldn't get ahead with them and you could get more in junk than an outright sale. I'm sure Delta has all of this figured out when it will be that they reach that point, but either way happy birthday to the MD-88's at Delta.
Your comment, in particular the last 1/2 of it, has been and will be debated pro and con for eons to come and both sides will be right to some degree, but once a course is laid out, it needs to be followed wholeheartedly, right or wrong.
Congratulations to the MD-88 and Delta.