I flew on one of these just last week, well kinda; it was a B717 (Qantas, Sydney to Hobart return). Flying the B717 on one of the few carriers in the US & Australia who still have them in their fleet is probably the nearest you'll probably get to experience a commercial passenger flight on a DC-9 in 2023.
I flew on a genuine DC9 on an internal flight in Venezuela in 1999. Looking at the 'boiler plate' on the door post as I boarded, I saw that it was already 31 years old. As they started up, the engines sounded as if they hadn't ever been serviced. But it got me there, and back.
Regardless of what the government did to force sales of it to airlines, the DC9 turned out to be a well built product as well. So well designed that it still flies today, as the Boeing 717 jetliner.
Awesome aircraft in which to ride. The acceleration and takeoff angle was great. It's why the MD-80 was nicknamed the "Mad Dog". My mom worked on the DC-9 interior finish crew for several years.
The DC9 and the MD80 are probably the type of plane I've had the most air time with as a passenger, seeing my parents lived in different parts of the country and it was more or less the default jet for regional domestic flights in Sweden during the eighties and nineties. An incredibly lovely and beautiful plane.
@@Milkmans_Son that would've been nice. Plane tickets were still pretty expensive in the mid 80s. Mostly just summer break and sometimes Christmas break.
Wish you had Patreon or RU-vid memberships. I feel guilty consuming your high-quality content at zero cost. I'm 100% sure I'm not alone in that respect. Also, the sound quality was so much better. Great work, as always.
The MD80 is one of the smoothest commercial jets I’ve ever flown on while in turbulent air. Also, one of the quietest and that was in the 90’s! My favorite seat, just forward the jet engine’s intake, which also offers a good view of the wing surfaces.
Best documentary of the DC-9 that I've seen. Thank you 😊! I first flew one with my hometown's Midwest Express Airlines. Most of their fleet was DC-9, until mid-2000's when their 717-2BL order started being delivered.
DC-9-20 was called "The Race Car" by SAS pilots as it had the short fuselage of the -10 variant and the wings and engines of the -40 variant. It was specified by SAS specifically for short take-off and landing performance on mountainous runways in Norway. It surely accelerated very quickly.
I've made so many flights on MD80's and DC9's. It's a shame that COVID accelerated their retirement. I mostly rode on AA MD80's. Many of these were taken over from TWA. I distinctly remember flying on a Spirit Air DC9 that was configured single class. It reminded me of a bus or a train! I hear the pilots considered it a fairly hot plane. It has high wing loading compared to the 737, so I guess it feels more like a fighter jet when you turn and climb. These were fun planes to ride on too.
@@psa722 I once was a passenger on The Spirit of Tulsa. The flight crew had no idea that their plane had a name and didn't notice the logo right by the door. What a let down!
@@kurtpena5462 It is quite horrible when the crew don’t even know what plane they are on. An FA on one of my flights recently said that the plane was a Boeing A320!
@22:00 If that ain’t God telling you, your going to Live I don’t know what is… Bless this woman for surviving at your will Lord and I hope she became one with you afterwards! Great Doc.
Always liked to fly the DC9, especially the later MD80 versions with its engines so far back (I always sit up front) no or very little engine noise entered the cabin. Once I was on the very first model (without the leading edge slats). A plane that, at the time, was around 40 years old.
I had the good fortune to ride on a series of rear-engined airliners and I agree about the quiet cabin. My first flight was aboard an Air France Caravelle, and I then went on to multiple flights on BAC 1-!!, VC-10, DC-9 and MD-80 (most of the latter being flown by Swissair or SAS).
I sat right next to the turbine several times. Window vibrated my jaw loose. A deep low humming sound accompanied by vibrations of varying intensity. I was drunk so it was fun.
I worked for Northwest Airlines in Atlanta, I used to check maintenance on them, also worked the JT8 engine shop that powered both of our 727 and DC-9 .
Gosh brilliant - I flew a lot on DC9 and MD80 as we travelled from London to Zurich a fair bit when I was a child - I always remember the take offs being seemingly more ‘assertive’ than on other aircraft though no idea of this was just perception and r a feature of the type. Many happy memories and I thank you for your brilliant efforts to bring these videos to us and I’m sure a lot of very hard work.
As a kid, I lived near an airport that served Ozark Airlines. I really liked their DC-9's and F-27's and would take as many pictures as I could of them when I had the chance. My parents would get the rolls of film developed for me as part of my allowance payment, which was a fair trade. I would log 'N' numbers and little differences in each plane, and file the pics with an information card. Lord knows where those files are today. It's a treasure trove to an airplane historian, maybe?
@@tomasjakovac7950 Yeah, that was 1974-76 until the family moved to another state, my parents got divorced shortly thereafter, we moved around a lot, then I moved out on my own at 17 and lost a lot of stuff, including models my father built, to my first and only eviction which I still kick myself over to this day. I lost a huge record collection and MOST LIKELY, those pictures. They're hopefully in someone else's hands.
Thank you for sharing the DC-9.. They are really nice. Hawaiian Airlines still fly their DC-9 in the island hopping. Delta still fly their DC-9s as well.
@@DC9Douglas Thank you. They, Hawaiian Airlines, fly those 717s still. Theu look so close to the old DC-9s. Thank you again for sharing that memory in me. The last time I was in Hawaii was back in 2008.
I flew on DC-9s quite often from Denver to Memphis and back. I liked the DC-9, but the 727 is still my favorite. The only time I ever got worried was on a DC-9 taking off from Stapleton at Denver. It was a hot day and the plane was loaded,,,I thought we were never going to get off the ground...even the Air Force pilot next to me in the passenger cabin told me he was getting concerned.
Another detailed piece; looking forward to Part 2. I watch your BAC 3-11 episode every couple of months; a magnificent post-empire history of early civilian jet aviation.
By the way, KLM also has Boeing 747s in their fleet, as well as the various models of the DC-9, and DC-10, so their fleet wasn't entirely built around Douglas/McDonnell-Douglas types.
Back in the 80s, Continental Airlines had a DC-9 -10 with a pair of JT8D-15 engines strapped to it. A CO pilot was telling me about it while it was parked at the gate and I was performing maintenance on it. He said every DC-9 pilot wanted to fly it as it flew like a rocket .
You missed the 1996 crash of a ValueJet DC-9 On May 11, 1996, ValuJet suffered its highest-profile accident when Flight 592, a DC-9 flying from Miami to Atlanta, crashed into the Florida Everglades, killing all 110 people on board. The crash was caused by an onboard fire triggered by full chemical oxygen generators that were illegally stowed in the cargo hold without their safety caps, by maintenance subcontractor SabreTech. The resulting investigation revealed numerous systemic flaws, and ultimately faulted both SabreTech for storing the generators on the plane along with ValuJet for not supervising them.
ValuJet, and later AirTran, really ran their DC-9 fleet ragged, and each had a few accidents without any fatalities. ValuJet was to be the launch customer for the Boeing 717 (or the MD-95 or even DC-9-95 if you're so inclined). A lot of people assume ValuJet shut down after the Everglades crash, but they actually bought and merged with AirTran in order to obtain a new identity, if you will. I will say that, by the time Southwest bought AirTran in 2011, they had a very modern fleet of 717s and 737s. Delta bought and refurbished their 717 fleet from Southwest and plans to fly them until 2025.
As far as I know, the 737 is not widened compared to the 707 and 727. The cross-section is the same and all of them had 6-abreast economy class seating. Even the 757 re-used the same cross-section as far as I know. (which basically means that all Boeing passenger narrowbody jets have the same cross-section, apart from the 717, which is just another step in the DC-9 evolution and thus not an original Boeing design). The only widening that I am aware of is between the -80 prototype (and the KC-135, which shares the fuselage cross-section) and the 707.
What was not included and should have , was the first privately ordered and owned DC9, by Hugh Hefner(Playboy)N950PB. A gorgeous bird. Overall, a nice vid!
In 1977 I flew on a DC-9 from DFW to Austin, TX. It was a Texas Iinternational (?) plane. We had 2 stops, one in Amarillo, the other in Lubbock. On approach to Amarillo the pilot went into a dust storm about 1k feet from the ground. The wind was wicked and I thought he was going into a flat spin and we would pancake into the ground, but we didn't. At the gate the plane rocked back and forth like I have never experienced before. I have another story when were in a DC-9 taking off in a dust storm in Chihuahua. It was screaming passengers holding onto their rosaries all the way to Juarez it was so rough. The pilot made an almost 90 degree turn as we lifted off the runway in Chihuahua. I was on the port side looking out the window. I thought the wing was going to scrape the ground. Oh, well; it was better than driving. :) We kissed the ground in Juarez. We all lived to fly another day in a DC-9, hooray!
I liked the Boeing 727 because of the higher performance. The DC9 should have been the basis of Douglas financial recovery. The problem was mismanagement. I was very upset when McDonnell (in which I had as my 1st stock shares). This was because I knew Douglas engineers and knew designing and economical, reliable jet was not enough.
I am pretty sure it is a 9-10 that visits RWI here in North Carolina. My first commercial ride was back row of a -30, not happy looking at the fan blades that looked like 10% of the blade area was worn away. It was an old dog by late 80's. And loud on the inside. And Mohawk!!! Memories of Grammy walking down the stairs into the tail of something rear engined, 1970??? and the Convair turboprops firing up. To us she looked like a movie star with her hats....Mohawk was the only airline flying from Toronto to PVD
Can’t wait for you to finish the series with the Boeing 717, such a beautiful aircraft, I’ve been to Hawaii 4 times in my life and they look beautiful on the tarmac and even better taking off, sadly I’ve never been to any island apart from Oahu so I’ve never done a inter-island flight and sadly never travelled on them.
Talked to an old air stewardess that had worked at SAS and Linjeflyg. She mentioned that the Caravelle used at the old Stockholm Airport at bromma regularly needed to use the braking parashute and in some weather conditions could not land at all and had to land at Arlanda. Linjeflyg that operated from the airport with it's shorter runways up untill the 1980's used the Fokker F28 as it's mainstay aircraft. I remember SAS making a very sudden switchover to almost all MD80's in the early-mid 80's. Annecdotally.
@@hepphepps8356 Maybe they never flew from Stockholm then. Transwede a competitor that arrived in the late 80's when the market deregulated had Caravelles which was pretty cool.
I flew weekly from 86-94. Primarily out of Houston (IAH) lots of rides on the DC-9 and MD-80, but to be honest, right or wrong, I was always happy to see a 737 at my Gate. Just more comfortable IMO but the last 10 years I prefer an A-321 to the newer 737. Seat are better for my Ol body. And yes early on many fights on the Ol 727, gas guzzler
Oh nice, a multipart one. I'm a big fan of the DC-9, flew a bunch in it when i was young as it was that or a 727 for most of south american short haul.
It was horribly designed from the get-go. Internal engines way to close to the main body. The weird big main landing gear. And put in production way to fast just to beat the Americans to show them Britain still mattered (it didn’t). And look how fast that came back to them
3 planes crashed this early in civilian jet history no airline would risk buying this and the world moved on ... There was no empire left to buy these kinds of massive f*))*)&*-ups.
The Comet was a trail blazer, and unfortunately, the manufacturer and the aircraft ended up paying the higher cost for being a leader, not a follower. All proposed jet engined windows were designed square before De Havilland worked out - after hugely expensive scientific investigation - that a square window design in a pressurised aircraft can lead to structural failure. An oval windowed design is the safer solution. The Comet makers re-engineered the Comet and shared all their lessons-learned with the entire airliner manufacturing industry for the benefit of everybody. It cost them dearly. Other manufacturers could learn from the experience of the world's first jetliner, saving a fortune in R+D, and reap the benefits in the order books, free from the stigma of negative publicity associated with the pioneering aircraft design. Nontheless, the redesigned classic Comets that flew proved in the end to be fantastically rugged and reliable aircraft that served operators well into the late 20th century. Considering it was the world's first jet airliner, it was a success. Whenever we make a routine flight aboard a comfortable, modern pressurised 320, 737, or 321, we fly in technology with roots in the pioneering Comet design. History can be however we like to tell it - but it's always best if history represents the truth. And the Comet was also, as you say, a beautiful aircraft.
My previous comment underestimated the longevity of the Comet somewhat. 😄 I forgot that the Nimrod - for a long time an integral part of NATO air defence, as well as an undisputedly valuable search and rescue tool - even surviving intact after a sea ditching in the late 90s. The Nimrod served daily missions every day into the 2010s. It's easy to forget - as I just did - the Nimrod was none other than a military versioned Comet.
@@MrJimheeren and now, the UK is an integral - & vital - part of the Airbus Industrie program, which as you’ll be aware, is currently the worlds foremost commercial aviation provider…
The DC-9 in Italy is associated to the Ustica massacre of 1980, which involved the Itava Flight 870. The aircraft was recovered from the sea floor, reassembled and it is now on display in Bologna in the Museum for the Memory of Ustica. We don't know yet what actually happened but we are sure it wasn't an accident and that other countries' air forces (we still don't know which ones) were involved in the disaster.
Great vlog as always! Boeing started the 737-200 program in mid 1965. UA, WA, BY, BU and a few others wanting a lager version. Buy the book 737 written by a WN pilot. A must for nerds. SK got the -21 series tailor maid for Norway with 1600m rwys and lots of terrain all over. Two of those aircraft was ment for LF but the Swedish CAA did not approve the noise level at BMA, so SAS bought them and LF bought F-28. Why? No T/R on the Fokker. Keep up the good work!
I remember when I joined CAA at Stockholm-Arlanda airport in 1988 that the SAS fleet was dominated by DC-9 and DC-10. The domestic airline at that time (Linjeflyg) however operated Fokker F-28. I always thought that the DC-9 and Fokker F-28 looked similar.
I used to fly those in the 1960s and 1970s after the initial N.Y. to Miami or San Juan flight, then on to BWIA's DC-9s to Saint Lucia, Antigua and Barbados. Loved the air-stairs in the back. Beautiful livery on those.
Ok some technical errors.. the DC-9 was not in direct competition with the 727. 737-200/300 was a direct competitor to all varieties of the dc/MD line. The DC8 was not a failure , the engines required to meet performance were not developed untill the late 80's. Delta is still operating the MD-90 (DC'9-900) and DC-8 was used by United as late as the early 90's.
The DC-8 and DC-9 were outstanding aircraft. Unfortunately it was all downhill from there. Only the Douglas Ungineers could manage to make the DC-10 more unstable and call it the MD-11
Vulovic's name is also in The Guinness World Records 2000 Year's Publication. That said a Charity by the name of Samaritans Purse i think still has a DC-9 still in operation.
Note that the DC-9 was responsible for taking out another manufacturer’s aircraft McDonnel Douglas made a habit of that including taking out Concord with the DC-10 and now they are doing the exact same thing as they are now part of Boeing. They are a considerable health and safety hazard.
“Taking out Concorde” utterly ridiculous. That’s about as big a blame stretch as I’ve ever heard. The part that caused the Concorde tyre failure was from the GE CF6 engine of a DC 10, in other words a part NOT designed or made by McDonnell Douglas.
The DC-8 was always a great ride, tho $24 first class Braniff SFO-LAX 707 first leg to LatAm was sweet. The DC-9/MD-80 was also generally nice. I loathe the 737. I avoid it when possible. The seat layout on most carriers best described as 'chunk light tuna'. And it's been stretched way beyond any sanity. Give me Airbus. Better still, Embraer.
I flew the -10, -30 and -50's and I always liked the -10 due to the the performance. The -10 had the same roll rate as a F-16. You had to be on top of a -10 engine failure on takeoff as you could walk the spoilers which would decrease climb out performance.
I flew the -15 and -32 in the U.K. I’d forgotten about spoiler drag !! Some of our ex RAF pilots said the -15 performance was similar to the Hunter. We called it the Pocket Rocket 😊
Flew them DC 9 - 15/32 some with aft airstairs at tail cone ….. in Mexico for 20 years a fleet of 21 a/c with AEROCALIFORNIA scheduled air carrier! All over Mexico LAX, SAN, PHX, TUS! Smooth flying! 24/7/365 80-100 hrs per month Day/night Rain or Shine IMC VMC Down to minimums! In 20 years 3 landings on one engine Nice landings Nice turbines P&W JT8-D
Today is 4 months since the 40th anniversary of the crash of Air Illinois Flight 710 near Pinckneyville, Illinois due to the flightcrew's mismanagement of electrical generator and distribution problems. All 10 passengers and crew were killed in the accident. Why couldn’t Air Illinois purchase a few DC-9-10 series?! Maybe access to spare parts would have been easier as well as better training for pilots and Air Illinois may stay in business longer than disappearing in 1984. If the airplane for Air Illinois Flight 710 was a DC-9-10 series, the accident may never have happened.
In my opinion, the DC-9 had the real misfortune of arriving at a time of declining sales of the DC-8 and the expensive safety issues the plagued the DC-10. And sales got really hurt with the 737 Classic models with the CFM56 engines arrived in the 1980's.
Actually the DC-9 arrived well ahead of any DC-10 safety issues. Only the series 50 was post DC-10. Also, the DC-9 was outselling the 737 in the late ‘60s, with deliveries exceeding 200 per year. Unheard of in those days. Douglas miscalculated the production logistics, cost, and sales volume. It was a victim of its own success.
He has pronounced it "Lewey" in many videos. It is not a mispronunciation. Some words are just pronounced differently on the other side of the pond. Other examples include Paris, aluminum, and vitamin.
@@heidirabenau511 Not a crash test. A landing distance test.May 2, 1980. MD-80. Excessive sink rate and pilot's inability to correct it resulted in very hard landing. One flight-test engineer injured.
Sink rate at touchdown was about 16 fps, vs the MLG's design failure rate of 15 fps, so at least the gear went above and beyond (perhaps helped by the tail coming off for load relief : ) The test card called for no trajectory adjustments below 100 ft, but the (FAA?) pilot decided they could finesse things and save a go-around. In the original 16 mm film you could see the fuselage noticeably bend for a film frame or two, and the tail get dragged along on the runway by control cables for maybe a second or less until those broke as well.
Have a question. on the very first DC9 models, 10 series, if I remember correctly there was not a rear stair exit, is that right? the 15 series had a rear stair exit with two over wing emergency exits where 10 series only had one over wing exit each side of fuselage.
I don’t know about model specifics but the rear airstair was not universal, some had it and some didn’t, I believe it was a customer option. I once worked for a airfreight company that had two series 33 aircraft one of which had the ventral stairs and the other did not.
@@johnyoung1128 Thanks a bunch for the reply. I remember flying Southern and Delta airlines starting in 1970 and both use the DC9. Remember pilots calling them Baby 9's.
What a rediculous use of language! All sentences are more than a minute long and consist of dozens of sentences glued together, tying dozens of topics together in one sentence. In the end, it becomes one big word salad. That being said, I am deeply impressed by the overall quality of your videos.