THE MD-80 WAS, AND STILL IS A GREAT TWIN jET.

RETIRING THE MD-80

Jet makes its final trip for American Airlines after 24 years in the sky

Written by:
TERRY MAXON | Staff Writer

Photography by:
MATTHEW BUSCH | Staff Photographer

Posted on: May 10, 2014

ROSWELL, N.M. — N7530, a shiny American Airlines jet, isn’t simply nearing the Roswell International Air Center runway as it sinks through the dry New Mexico air one recent morning. It is approaching the end of its 24-year working life.
Once it rolls into a slot in a long line of fading AA jets, workers here will record its serial numbers, take off its medical equipment and other paraphernalia, drain its tanks and close it up. Unless there’s a change of heart, a sudden surge in business, the airplane has ended its service with American Airlines.
It’s a fate that will be shared over the next few years by the rest of its fleet mates as American retires the remaining airplanes from what used to be the biggest fleet in its history, the McDonnell Douglas MD-80.
At one time, American operated more than 370 MD-80s, which it dubbed the Super 80. Now there are fewer than 160 left, and the fleet will shrink to under 140 by year’s end. By the end of 2018, if plans aren’t changed, the last MD-80 will be out of American’s enormous fleet.
Almost every American pilot of the last three decades has spent time in the MD-80 cockpit. Billy Parker, hired at American in 1989, logged 13,250 flying hours in the plane, which he described as “just a good, reliable pair of blue jeans.”
“It’s not as sexy as the newer airplanes,” he said, “but man, it has been a workhorse.”
Mind you, there’s nothing wrong with N7530, which was delivered to American in September 1990. Its engines are humming, its interior is clean, its skin of polished aluminum still gleams.
Until its last day, it carried hundreds of American Airlines passengers each day throughout the U.S. In the four days before this final flight, it had flown out of its North Texas home to Detroit, El Paso, Little Rock, Milwaukee, Nashville, Oklahoma City, Ontario, Calif., Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Tulsa and Washington, D.C.
Twenty-one flights in all, each beginning or ending at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, covering nearly 15,000 miles as the crow flies, somewhat more as air traffic controllers dictate.
The problem with N7530 is simply that it is old. Its lease has about run out. If American were to keep it, it would need an extensive, expensive maintenance overhaul in the near future.
And in a world of $3-a-gallon jet fuel, its newer, more efficient companions in the American fleet have made N7530’s continued service, and that of the other MD-80s, not a money-wise proposition.
American chief executive Doug Parker sums up the MD-80’s problems succinctly: “They’ve become obsolete, really.
“There are new aircraft coming in that are more fuel-efficient, and the cost of fuel is so much higher than when those airplanes were purchased,” Parker said. “The economics are much better to bring in a new airplane because you save enough in fuel.”