Originally Posted by
WHBM
N751NW was new to SAS in early 1968, when I was quite well down still in school. Sold to Northwest in 1991 after a good 23 years service, it lasted right through to the Delta merger, whose colours it took, until the start of 2011, when it was scrapped at Sanford. 43 years was a pretty good innings. Can you imagine a 1945-built DC4 still being in front line service in 1988 ?
Thanks for the detail on ship 751,
Mr. M.
Back in the early 2000s when Northwest and Alaska enjoyed a strong partnership, I logged a lot of flights with NW, including aboard a good number of vintage DC-9s. I only managed two flights aboard the -40s (Ships 751 and 753) but the highlight for me was in March of 2003 aboard a then 37 year old DC-9-14 (N8912E) which was delivered new to Eastern in 1966. Sadly, she was retired to Marana, AZ just two years later.
At present I am typing from thirty-some-odd thousand feet over southeastern Oregon, enroute to Las Vegas aboard a 17 year old 737-900. Like most of you, I've been diligent about logging my flights dating back to my earliest memories of flight at age 4. The family's pretty sure I've been on a couple more flights prior to that but as their level of interest in this regard has never been as keen as mine, they're at a complete loss as to what those flights may have been. After much therapy, I'm only now just getting around to forgiving them. But I digress...
More to the point, after you've flown as many times as I have (and no doubt some of you have, if not more so) some interesting numbers begin to emerge. Yesterday, I crossed the three quarter million mile mark on flights flown aboard 737-800s - far and away the most mileage I've ever accrued on any single aircraft type. It's taken me 555 fights aboard 173 different aircraft to get this far. The next highest mileage total on aircraft by variant is aboard 737-900s with 371 flights totaling 488830 miles. Also of mild interest (to me at least) is that as of this flight I've logged 1735 flights aboard Alaska Airlines while at the same time having flown into/out of Seattle 1735 times. Thanks to flightmemory.com for compiling that stat. Who knew?
On a secondary note, hats off to
jlemon for correctly figuring out the first part of
jrl767's quiz. I would never have come up with Central
, much less the interchange flight to Portland. Well done, Sir!