science · 06 January 2014 · 10 years ago
In 2014, the last flight of a U.S. passenger McDonnell Douglas DC-9 aircraft left Minneapolis/St. Paul, going to Atlanta. The Delta airline was the first to begin service with the original 65-seat version in 1965, as well as the last U.S. major airline to retire it. Delta had originally phased out their DC-9 fleet in 1993. The merger with Northwest in 2008 brought back 94 DC-9s with an average age (as of 31 Dec 2007) of 35.6 years, to be phased out again. Despite being known as a reliable workhorse, the jet’s technology was dated, its engines noisy, but most importantly, it could not match the newer airplanes in fuel economy, while fuel prices were continuing to increase. They have been replaced with newer, quieter, more efficient aircraft, such as the Boeing 717 (which still owes much to the original DC-9 design).
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