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Delta Will Promote Pilots to Captain—If They Can Fly This Aging Plane
Since almost the beginning of the commercial airline business, junior pilots have had to toil years in the second chair waiting to win a pair of captain’s wings. Now Delta Air Lines Inc. is offering them the chance to vault into a captain’s seat in as little as six months. The catch? The promotion requires flying an unloved, aging plane nicknamed the “Mad Dog” that Delta plans to retire in three years. (www.bloomberg.com) Plus d'info...Sort type: [Top] [Newest]
The Age of a lot of the US airline fleet should be a global embarrassment. Flying domestically in the US these days is hell.
Didn't Delta just implement a 1 year seat lock recently because they were having pilots upgrade in as little as a few months?
Ahhhh the VC-10, now you're talking, and sadly no longer flying - they were retired quite recently after 50 years of service and some are on display at Bruntingthorpe in the UK, clearly visible on google earth, along with various other types. The Royal Air Force scooped up and modified the remaining ones that were worth having for tanker duties and I was lucky to have worked on both passenger and tanker variants in the 80s as a flight systems tech. The VC-10 C1 flying display is one of the most amazing spectacles and compares with any passenger aircraft display that I've seen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrGAaUqGbn0 is relatively tame compared to some practice displays I watched at RAF Brize Norton in the early 80s but they had more fatigue life then...
Sorry, didn't intend to high-jack this squawk, just felt compelled to comment when I saw "...VC-10"!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrGAaUqGbn0 is relatively tame compared to some practice displays I watched at RAF Brize Norton in the early 80s but they had more fatigue life then...
Sorry, didn't intend to high-jack this squawk, just felt compelled to comment when I saw "...VC-10"!
There is a very big difference between this aircraft and a VC10 ..for most is the extra 2 engines at the back plus the overall size of a VC10 compared to this aircraft.
I would totally jump on that! I've never heard a pilot complain about anything with MD in front of it.
Pilots complain these days about the fact that they're little more than systems monitors and don't get to do much actual flying. They should love the MD-80 family of aircraft. These aircraft have an interesting mix of analog and digital equipment. Enough automation has been added since they were built so that they can do almost anything the newer aircraft can do. There's an interesting tribute on YouTube from an MD-80 pilot who is moving to Boeing aircraft. The video's ID is 'S9bjcHgwfQI'.
From a passenger's perspective, it's still one of my favorites. There's no IFE, but you can bring your own smart phone or tablet to keep you entertained. The seats are comfortable and most airlines give you a couple of inches more pitch than on newer aircraft in their fleets. And they look like they absolutely want to get into the air, a smaller version of the beautiful 4-engined Vickers VC-10 that flew in the 60s and 70s. When we flew AA through Dallas, I always looked forward to the IND-DFW and DFW-IND segments because they were all flown on MD-80s. Sadly, all but one flight per day have been converted to B737-800 service. I guess that's progress, but I'll miss the Mad Dogs.
From a passenger's perspective, it's still one of my favorites. There's no IFE, but you can bring your own smart phone or tablet to keep you entertained. The seats are comfortable and most airlines give you a couple of inches more pitch than on newer aircraft in their fleets. And they look like they absolutely want to get into the air, a smaller version of the beautiful 4-engined Vickers VC-10 that flew in the 60s and 70s. When we flew AA through Dallas, I always looked forward to the IND-DFW and DFW-IND segments because they were all flown on MD-80s. Sadly, all but one flight per day have been converted to B737-800 service. I guess that's progress, but I'll miss the Mad Dogs.