American's MD-80s

[dinghao]

Anyone know if the existing fleet will get the new livery? I would think some of them are close to being cycled out.

[The Inspector]

Americusair will probably phase out the rest of the MD-80 fleet as they come up for 30K checks, and I'll bet not many of them escape the furnaces and that's a shame they're a neat little airplane and easier than most to work on. I had fun teaching them and being the SME for the maintenance line I also learned to have a great deal of respect for the philosophy behind their design.

[dinghao]

Inspector, can you explain what you mean by being impressed with the philosophy behind the design of the Dougs?

[The Inspector]

Inspector, can you explain what you mean by being impressed with the philosophy behind the design of the Dougs?

It's basically the philosophy that won WW2. Build it simple, build it to limit down time due to damage, make it as reliable as a VW bug. BADWRENCH maintenance lines had a bad habit of letting the flaps down on ladders while doing in hanger functional checks. On a 727 that meant a $30,000.00 trailing edge wedge and sending the removed trailing edge section to the back shop for a couple days of thrashing, an 8 ft wooden ladder wins again.
Our MD-8 line nailed exactly 1 ladder with the flaps in 3+ years of doing them, it was an aluminum ladder, the flap rolled the legs below the first rung out in four directions, about 160 screws and five minutes of trimming one edge for gapping clearance replaced the outer trailing segment of the flap (actually the flap segment wasn't that badly deformed but it WAS our bust).
Having developed and taught the DC-8, I came to understand that DOUGLAS built airframes that were tougher than Martian Algebra yet pretty easy to work on & 95% very simple to fix, and if you understood a DC-8's design and systems (except the DC-8 fuel system which required lots of pushing gas around and eventually outboard before sending it to the dinosaur processors, it's easier to drive a steam locomotive than be a DC-8 F.E.), everything else was exactly the same just bigger or smaller, the 787 gear actually owes a great deal to the design of the DOUG commercial designs.(as does the 767 owe a bunch to the DC-10)
Our line could actually do a complete slat cable replacement and re-install/rigging faster than ALASKA Maintenace could.
Structural corrosion blend out limits were amazing. On a 727/737 limits were sometimes .035 or less and the MD-80 was about a foot and a half or so it seemed, very generous. It is a tab airplane so flight control surfaces are not complex, just straight ahead tin work, if the tab is rigged correctly, the surface will be 'right there' too. Fun airplane to work on, test flight stalls were basically like a CESSNA 182 nose up....ugh..ugh..ugh, drop through straight ahead and continue flying-of all the big airplanes I ever worked on, I miss the DOUGS the most and the 'little airplane' the most.

[Craig59]

At the moment the plan is for them to be retired last quarter of 2017 or first quarter 2018. As to whether they'll be painted in the new livery, I haven't heard.