A DC-9 Flight For the History Books and A Look Back

Delta is set to fly the last scheduled U.S. commercial McDonnell Douglas DC-9 flight on Monday, January 6. Appropriately tagged as Delta flight 2014, the final flight will depart Minneapolis/St. Paul for Atlanta just before sunset, marking the end to a 48 year career of flying scheduled commercial flights in the United States.

The very first time I ever flew on a jet aircraft was on a DC-9.

It was on Thanksgiving day 1967 or '68. I was going to Boston for Thanksgiving with a close friend who was going to college in the area, and I had waited too late to get a seat on the Wednesday before the holiday, so I went on the holiday itself. There were exactly eight people on the plane: two pilots, two stewardesses, and four passengers. I'm sure the luggage and cargo was light, too. This was in the days before deregulation and the planes flew regardless of holidays or other distractions, like lack of passengers.

I had visions of movies with Robert Stack or John Wayne as the pilot with the aircraft struggling down the runway trying to claw its way into the air before the runway ran out.

The pilot taxied to the end of the runway, did his runup, and let off the brakes. The cushions on the seatback curled around my head, the plane went about a hundred yards down the runway and leapt into the air. The only way I could have walked up the aisle would have been to use the seatbacks as ladder rungs. The plane must have been at a 40 degree angle of attack. I was very impressed, to say the least.

Coming back on the following Monday morning on a fully loaded DC-9 was a totally different story.

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