With aircraft, age is just a number. Quality of maintenance is far more important. There are plenty of smaller private planes out there still flying that are perfectly safe -- and less robustly built than your average commercial jet. If we maintained our cars like planes are maintained, the engines would be rebuilt every so often, any metal with so much of a hint of corrosion would be replaced -- and they'd last for years.

As for keeping the -9s in service, they're great planes and I'd rather fly in one of them than a one-class RJ any day.