American Airlines MD80

[davebasing]

This week sees the end of an era with the final retirement of the last of the American Airlines MD80s which first entered service way back in May 1983 and which for many years dominated the scene at Dallas Fort Worth as seen below. Their fleet peaked at around 360 of the beasts of which I managed to see most but still have a few gaps. Flew on just 6 of them (N227AA, N258AA, N486AA, N491AA, N9402W & N9619V). The final 26 will join their former mates in store at Roswell, New Mexico.

Graphed a fair number of them over the years, but only one in a slightly different scheme, N823RA at Seattle-Tacoma in July 2000 still with its former Reno Air white top. It still flies in Indonesia with Airfast as PK-OCT. Another out of normal sequence machine was N110HM which came from AAs take-over of TWA but was relegated to a fire trainer at DFW after it fell of its jacks while on maintenance there in August 2012. I graphed N7522A from my window in the good days of the now gone airport hotel in the centre of Boston airport.


Just a few for memory’s sake.


US08 874 by dave tompkins, on Flickr
US08 875 by dave tompkins, on Flickr
00-sn by dave tompkins, on Flickr
99-nc by dave tompkins, on Flickr
US08 900 by dave tompkins, on Flickr
03-oc by dave tompkins, on Flickr
IMG_1401 by dave tompkins, on Flickr
IMG_1418 by dave tompkins, on Flickr

Occasionally they shared the ramp with surprising visitors (Boston 1999)
99-pa by dave tompkins, on Flickr

And journeys end, the crock of gold at the end of the rainbow
99-mt(a) by dave tompkins, on Flickr

[graham]

Always a lovely looking aircraft Dave, made me take a look back at my Stateside trip logs, I managed to see 311 of the MD-80s, including 64 of them on 2/7/06, my first Chicago trip and first day spent at ORD, on a day when I made well over 800 frames.I remember I could only see the nosewheel fleet numbers on loads of them and spent a substantial amount of time when I got back home putting registrations to them with the help of the invaluable AFQR. Some as you will know simply had the three digits of the registration as fleet number such as "573" which was "N573AA", but then you had anomalies whereby fleet number "474" which you might expect to be "N474AA" but was in fact just "N474" and fleet number "504" which was "N70504"

[rh226]

Not that I ever saw it as such, but N7522A was also a Boeing 707-123B with American. Did see it at Stansted as Aero America.

[davebasing]

Sept 1, 2019 21:35:48 GMT rh226 said:

Not that I ever saw it as such, but N7522A was also a Boeing 707-123B with American. Did see it at Stansted as Aero America.

Like you I saw (and graphed) N7522A and sister ship N7521A of Aero America at Stansted in 1979. Never did graph N7522A as American AL, the closest being N7572A and 7582A in store at Marana in 1980 before their short flights to Davis Monthan for the USAF to use in the KC135E programme (primarily the fins and engines) which involved some 187 civil 707s which arrived at AMARC between 1981 & 1990 and ended their days there like this former TWA machine below which I graphed on an AMARC overflight as late as 2008.

79-jj by dave tompkins, on Flickr
79-bi by dave tompkins, on Flickr
ac 205 by dave tompkins, on Flickr
ac 204 by dave tompkins, on Flickr
US08 976(1) by dave tompkins, on Flickr

[keithh]

Did manage to fly on one from Albuquerque to Dallas in 2015. We were delayed about an hour as they tried to get the rear door to close properly! It was N471AA

[davidallum]

It will be a shame to see these go but that's progress I guess,did manage to fly in three of them:

N591AA 16/11/1996 PHX-ORD

N7526A 10/11/1997 DFW-LAX

N496AA 15/11/1997 LAS-ORD

[rugbyref]

I never flew on an AA MD80, but my only flight on a BWIA MD80 was memorable, as we were escaping from Antigua to Barbados fleeing a hurricane. Carib BN2 from Nevis to Antigua, then the BWIA MD80 to Barbados, where we spent many hours playing travel Scrabble waiting for our BA flight home.