June 2020: Delta retirement McDonnell Douglas MD88/90s......

[Stratofreighter]

https://worldairlinenews.com/2019/04/13 ... as-md-90s/

Delta to expedite the retirement of its remaining McDonnell Douglas MD-90s

Delta Air Lines McDonnell Douglas MD-90-30 N902DA (msn 53382) FLL (Bruce Drum). Image: 101323.

Delta Air Lines currently operates a dwindling fleet of 40 McDonnell Douglas MD-90-30s.

During its first quarter earnings call, Chief Financial Officer (CFO) Paul Jacobson,
announced the company will now accelerate the retirement of its remaining MD-90s.

The airline will provide a more definitive retirement schedule later in the second quarter.

Related to this, Delta also plans to retire the last McDonnell Douglas MD-88 in 2020.

The MD-90s will be the end of line of operating McDonnell Douglas jets by Delta.

https://worldairlinenews.com/2019/04/13 ... as-md-90s/

[Stratofreighter]

https://www.ch-aviation.com/portal/news ... o-covid-19

Delta may retire MDs earlier due to COVID-19

06.03.2020 - 13:08 UTC
Delta Air Lines (DL, Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson) is prepared to accelerate the retirement
of some MD-88s, MD-90s,
as well as B757s and B767s to mitigate the downturn caused by the COVID-19 epidemic,
Chief Financial Officer Paul Jacobson said during the Raymond James Institutional Investors Conference.

The carrier still operates forty-eight MD-88s,
which are 28.7 years old on average.

It plans to retire all of them this year.

The MD-90s, of which Delta operates 26, are due to stay in its fleet until 2022.

The latter subfleet is younger, averaging 22.6 years.

The McDonnell Douglas twinjets are mainly being replaced by A220s of which Delta already operates thirty A220-100s.

It has a further fifteen A220-100s and fifty A220-300s on order from Airbus Canada (Montréal Mirabel).

https://www.ch-aviation.com/portal/news ... o-covid-19

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https://www.ch-aviation.com/portal/news ... phase-outs

28.04.2020 - 03:58 UTC

Delta Air Lines has brought forward the retirement of its 32 remaining MD-88s by six months to the end of July 2020
and is also considering retiring other aircraft earlier than originally planned.

Delta said in a quarterly filing that the accelerated retirement of the MD-88s,
which were originally scheduled to leave the fleet by the end of the year,
resulted in a USD22 million impairment charge.

https://www.ch-aviation.com/portal/news ... phase-outs

Speaking during an investor call,
Chief Executive Ed Bastian identified further types likely to exit the fleet.

"Certainly anything that was scheduled to retire over the next five years
as an accelerated path towards retirement just to be very simple and straightforward.

If the MD-88s were already retiring this year so that's on the MD-90s.

We'll probably be making that decision soon in a similar vein.
We got B767s, B757s, there are some of the older models that we operate.
We will certainly be looking at the smaller regional jets that we operate," he said.

The airline currently operates
fourteen MD-90s (22.6 years old on average),
fifty-six B767-300(ER)s and
twenty-one B767-400(ER)s (24 and 19.4 years old on average, respectively), and
111 B757-200s and
sixteen B757-300s (23.5 and 17.3 years old on average, respectively).

All of these aircraft are owned by Delta.

...and
https://www.ch-aviation.com/portal/news ... phase-outs
has got a lot more that is interesting to read...

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https://www.aerotime.aero/aerotime.team ... og-era-end

on 20th May 2020

Delta Air Lines reveals d-day of Mad Dog era end

On June 3, 2020, Delta Airlines will mark the bittersweet end of an era.
On the day, the airline’s last McDonnell Douglas jet will make its one last journey to the retirement place.

Delta’s MD-90 is the last remaining jet of the kind in service around the world,
and the penultimate operator of MD-88.

When American Airlines waved good-bye to its fleet of McDonnell Douglas jets in the autumn of 2019,
Delta Airlines became the sole largest operator of the type not only in the continent, but the whole world.

The airline still had under a hundred of MDs,
and their average age varied from over 20 years (MD-90) to just under 30 (MD-88).

The service life of Delta’s Mad Dogs was cut short by the COVID-19 crisis.
In March 2020, the U.S. airline announced it would retire its MD-88 and MD-90 fleets.

Now, it has revealed that final McDonnell Douglas jets will carry the last revenue flights in early June,
before they embark to Blytheville aircraft graveyard for retirement.

While some other airlines and leasing companies still have some stored MD-90s,
Delta Airlines is the last airline that still actively uses it for passenger service, planespotters.net data indicates.

The airline is also the penultimate operator of the MD-88.
Once they are gone, the only five operational MD-88s left in the world will be those of Taban Airlines (Iran).

The last revenue flights of Delta’s Mad Dogs are scheduled on June 2, 2020.

The final task of MD-88, Flight 88, will be from Washington-Dulles International Airport (IAD) to Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL).

Delta Flight 90 (the last one for MD-90, as the name suggests)
will take off from Bush Intercontinental Airport (IAH) and will also land in ATL.

After gathering in Atlanta, the T-tail jets will take off once more.
But this time, there will be no paying passengers onboard,
as the planes will head to the boneyard in Blytheville.

The final flight of the kind, of the last MD-88, is scheduled on June 3, 2020.

https://www.aerotime.aero/aerotime.team ... og-era-end

[Stratofreighter]

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tedreed/20 ... 0b23541d58

‘Boeing Builds Airplanes, McDonnell-Douglas Builds Character,’
Pilots Recall As Delta Plans Final MD-88, MD-90 Trips

A set of hard-working airplanes with a colorful nickname, “Mad Dogs,”
have earned a long afterlife for the name McDonnell Douglas,
an aircraft maker that disappeared in a 1997 merger.

But on Tuesday, two more McDonnell Douglas aircraft, the MD-88 and MD-90,
will leave the commercial U.S. passenger fleet as Delta operates its final flights for both.

Delta Flight 90, the final MD-90 flight, will take off from Houston and is scheduled to arrive in Atlanta around 9 a.m.

Delta Flight 88, the final MD-88 flight, will arrive from Dulles at 10 a.m. Then the two planes will fly to an aircraft storage yard in Blytheville, Ark.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tedreed/20 ... 0b23541d58

Delta has a long history with McDonnell Douglas.
It took the first DC-9 in 1965;
it operated MD-88s starting in 1988;
it was the launch customer for the MD-90 in 1995;
and it now operates 91 of the 116 Boeing 717s that were manufactured.

“At our peak, Delta operated a fleet of 185 ‘Mad Dog’ jets that flew roughly 900 daily flights,” Delta said in a press release.
Before the coronavirus crisis, Delta was down to 76 Mad Dogs.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tedreed/20 ... 0b23541d58

But the MD-88 and MD-90 are “still very traditional hand-flown airplanes.
Everything you control goes through cables and pulleys.

“The elevator is totally manual,” Tahara said.
“So is turning the airplane – cables and pulleys out to the control tabs.
They are very literally hands on airplanes, something we are not going to see again.”

As for the history, “Going back to the DC-9, even parts of the DC-3 made their way onto it,” Tahara said.
“Some of the knobs go all the way back to the 1930s.

“Douglas was really good about using things over and over.
So much aviation history was handed down,” he said.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tedreed/20 ... 0b23541d58

Because the 88s and 90s aren’t as fully automated as more modern aircraft,
“they take some getting used to,” he said.
“It makes you a better pilot. It puts you at the top of your game.”

As they say, Boeing builds airplanes. McDonnell Douglas builds character.

On arrivals, for instance, the 88s and 90s don’t have the complex flight management systems of newer aircraft.
“The airplane wasn’t designed for this environment,” Ambrosi said.
“You have to help it along, take it to manual flight mode.”

https://www.forbes.com/sites/tedreed/20 ... 0b23541d58