The last DC10 flight...
 

Well, in just a few hours, UA#44 will operate from HNL to ORD. This will be the last scheduled operation of the DC10. While I can't say I will really miss the aircraft, it is a passing of an era...

Yeah, I miss the DC10, but I'm reloading... Goodbye and good riddens I say, oh, and take the 727's with you.

Great planes in their day. CO in particular showed you could overhaul the interior and they were one of the nicest C/J cabins out there long haul. No seat 15B though. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/wink.gif

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~ Glen ~

That's too bad, F on the DC-10 was really comfortable.
Even worse is the scrapping of the ORD-HNL route...
Any chance there will be a NYC-HNL? Yeah right!

CO has a EWR-HNL route on a DC-10

For trivia buffs, the last DC-10s were sold to Fedex:

http://www.planebusiness.com/ubb/For...ML/000150.html

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~ Glen ~

I know but that doesn't help me as a 1K (who wants to retain status) http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/frown.gif

I too will miss the DC-10 and the great whine of the engines. Another great plane is gone!

Oh, I see. Well, than I see your reason for sarcasm, because there is no way United will ever have a flight from NYC-OGG. There have so few flights out of NYC already. United makes it very hard for 1K's in NYC to maintain their status when there are so many other airlines out of NYC, and they have so few flights.

The one thing I will NOT miss about the CO (or I'm sure the UA) DC-10s was sitting in coach exit rows. The seals often were not perfect, and the window seat person often got frostbite on 1 10 hours flight! I swear a bottle of water once got ICE in it that I had tucked down at door base!

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~ Glen ~

I feel nostalgic about DC-10s. Some newer planes are obviously more modern, but I have never been more consistently comfortable on a domestic plane than in 4C in the old DC-10 F when it flew ORD-SFO.

I just flew one from LAS on Monday the 237 pm flight LAS ORD I too will miss this old friend.

On the general subject of retired planes, I was remembering the old 747SP, which UA inherited from Pan Am. It was an easily reconized version of the 747 due to its oddly shorter length. I knew that UA had retired them many years ago, but it has been years since I have last seen any airline using them.

I decided to run a web search on the 747SP and found a web site dedicated solely to that model. Besides the collection of photographs, there were two items on the site that I thought most interesting. It detailed the ownership history of each of the SPs produced and it showed photos of active and retired planes. Several airports in Arizona have apparently been turned into long term storage facilities for excess airplane inventory and for retired aircraft to be used for spare parts.

Though I had never flown on one, I thought it strange to see these multimillion dollar airliners which had once transported thousands of passengers around the world, now sitting idle on desert airstrips.

If interested, the web site is:
www.747SP.com

A boeing 747sp flown by Pan Am in 1977 still holds the record for flying around the world (from and back to SFO) via both poles. The flight took just over 54 hours.

South African airlines will try to break this record this November by doing the same thing out of JFK.

I will miss the DC-10 but I always had a fondness for the 1011's. The main problem I have with the DC-10 was the poor design that caused needless accidents and deaths in the 70's.

EDSH, thanks for the link to the 747SP site. Very enjoyable!