747-200 Retirement DO?
 

At the DC-10 retirement DO, it was mentioned that the 742 is next.

Wikipedia says there are only 2 left in service, and those are used for the runs from Tokyo-Narita to Saipan and Guam. That may be the "beach" service - island holidays for Japanese who don't want to spend what it takes to get to Hawaii!

I don't recall whether we got a date, but if there are only 2 in service, it can't be that far off. Who do we know in operations? :)

Oh, and this is the -200, not the -200F
 

Northwest has a lot of 747-200Fs (28?) but they have fairly few seats, and I don't think most of us would want to ship ourselves air freight just to be on the retirement flight of those.

A glance at Airliners.net indicates we're looking at possibly four planes... it may be that 2 are in scheduled service and 2 are used for charter ops, based on the photo captions there.

N623US (1979)
N624US (1979)
N637US (1986)
N638US (1986)

Poking around flight trackers, it looks like there's NW73/74 between NRT and GUM, and NW75/76 between NRT and SPN. Any others still on 742s?

Memories of an airTran come to mind. :D

Who knows, may be up for the 742 retirement whenever it rolls around. :D

Any word on a DC-9 retirement DO within the next 3+ decades? ;) :p :D

I 'might' want to do the NWA 747-200 retirement DO. Only if I know what route it is gonna fly and when is the last day? ;)

Also...if I can get a seat on the 'Upper Deck!' ^

-BondAir

I am absolutely in for this. I spent plenty of hours on NW1 and 2 (LAX-NRT) between 2002 and when they cut over to the -400 last year(?). I will fly to NRT to partake in the last flight of the 200. I know it's just a model but unlike other AC there are some big differences between the two and it marks the beggining of the end for an amazing airplane (this ac is an engineering marvel). I LOVE the upstairs on the 200.

I will start to save miles for the last flight and $$ for the trip to NRT (if thats the final routing). The way I see it I can get a really good MR in and get back some of the miles I burn for the last flight.

I say we take the whole upper deck. :D

I haven't ever flown a 742 (just 744s), so perhaps being on the last flight might be a good thing for me. :)

Maybe they'll bring back a 742 on the HNL-NRT runs to increase capacity.

it appears next NW schedule change (around March 11th or so) shows NW21 HNL-NRT and NW22 NRT-HNL back to B747-200 (currently B747-400). We're booked on these flights and seat map showed B747-200 "Beach Market" configuration. NW9 HNL-NRT and NW10 NRT-HNL remains B747-400 (as well as NW15 HNL-KIX and NW16 KIX-HNL).

N637US was, Airfleets claims, stored at Pinal Airpark outside Marana, AZ in June of last year. This would jive with Airliners.net having no photos of it after last April. Of course, it's in the new paint, so it's not one of the many red planes visible on Google Maps. :)

So... that'd seem to leave us with N623US, N624US, and N638US... but this is really a big guessing game. I think I know someone who might know someone who would know... I'll try asking. :D

Geez if that's true, I know I was on one of them back in December flying NW 73. The cabin was still very clean. This 742 however had more WBC seats on the bottom (up to row 16, 17, 18 I think) yet no one was sitting there...they filled up the forward cabin and the top, but I still had Row 85 A/B to myself. It was a pleasure to be on it if it's retirement is upon the horizon.

This is one I'll be on for sure. The 742 is one of the great, elegant rides left out there. I was a happy pax in 87A many times. For those of you who are good at finding this info, please let us know as soon as you are sure this is the one. I call 87A! :D

The -200 is my favorite. I have been very lucky to have flown on this type of a/c many times to Asia. I especially loved the upper deck with its 12 seats. I remember when the upper deck was first class. I will miss this airplane. If there is a "Do", I would love to attend.

The 742s might stay for a while, because the pilots can rotate with the cargo and charter flights, and as long as they are keeping the 742Fs, they can keep maintaining these beach capacity flights. In the short term, there aren't any planes that can replace the capacity of these 742s. And we all know the A330s could be used elsewhere, should they so choose.

The 747-2 upper deck was nice to ride in... very quiet and private! I switched most of my flying to AA and miss the 747!